Make No Mistake
by dickyang
Summary: College AU. This is an account of a series of events poorly defined as the best days of their lives. Zosan/Frobin
1. August

**Chapter 1: August**

* * *

Sanji clenched his fist around the ten dollar bill in his pocket as he walked to a seedier part of town—a part of town completely unfit for a kid his age to be wandering around in. He kept his eyes peeled, searching down alleys and side-streets.

He'd worked very hard for that ten dollars. It was bullshit, that being all he had, but he'd work harder. Every day. He had finally convinced that shitty old man to actually pay him for all the work he did in that stupid restaurant. The Baratie. Ugh. He'd scrubbed so many dishes that his hands felt raw.

It'd taken him nearly a year to convince Zeff to not only let him work in the restaurant, but to compensate him for his time. It probably wouldn't have taken him so long if he could speak the fucking language when he first got there.

He remembered trying to get Zeff to actually let him cook. That hadn't gone well. But it'd had its small victories. Extremely small.

Zeff had walked into the small apartment they shared and found Sanji standing atop one of the counters, digging into the cabinets overhead to find another frying pan. He was caught red-handed.

"What the hell d'you think you're doing, brat!" Zeff had barked at him, and Sanji had spun around, jumping off the countertop, trying to hide the pan behind his back.

He remained silent.

"You know you're not allowed in the kitchen."

Sanji stared blankly at him, translating in his head. He recognized a few of the words Zeff had said to him. He could work with that.

"I can cook," Sanji said in English, and he held the frying pan out in front of him, doing a little flip of some imaginary stir-fry. Or something. Whatever. Zeff knew what he was saying.

"There's no way I'm letting some shitty nine-year-old kid who likes to play chef use my nice and expensive pots and pans and cutlery and ingredients," Zeff growled.

Sanji paused and processed the sentence with the words he knew. He actually knew most of those words when he thought about it. Zeff stood there, looming, with his arms crossed over his chest. Even when he was raging pissed, he always gave Sanji time to stop and mentally translate.

He wanted to say a lot of things. He wanted to tell Zeff that he'd been cooking for years, and that he was probably better than the old shitty bastard, and that he could turn that stupid shitty restaurant into something incredible, and he would make all the chefs there look fucking stupid in comparison, just give him a goddamned _chance_—but he couldn't, he didn't know all the words for that, or hardly even half of them, and he grit his teeth together, incredibly frustrated.

"Let me work. At the Baratie."

Zeff threw his head back and laughed, and Sanji seethed.

"Absolutely not."

"No?"

"No."

_"Why!" _

Zeff snatched the frying pan from Sanji's grip and knocked it against his head, and the little blond clutched his skull and mumbled what could only be a string of curses in his mother tongue while he glared at his legal guardian.

"Because you're an ignorant, bratty little punk with a shitty attitude, and I highly doubt you could cook anything close to being edible, much less enjoyable."

"Just tonight," Sanji ground out, nearly shaking. "I'll show you," he said, his accent so thick, stretching and softening his words too much, he knew, he wrestled with the damn vowels, they were butchered in this language, the kids at school always fucking mocked him for it, called him stupid, he spoke so _slowly_, and even speaking now made him so astoundingly angry. But he knew that Zeff could understand him easily at this point. "Let me cook just tonight and I'll show you. I'm a great chef."

He rarely ever spoke so many words in a single sentence. He rarely spoke at all.

"Please," Sanji said, finally lifting his eyes to Zeff's. "I love to cook."

Zeff regarded him for a moment, and Sanji held his breath. And after an eternity, Zeff held the frying pan out to him. "Just tonight."

Sanji grinned at Zeff, and he thanked him in French, because he forgot to switch over, and Zeff smiled and said, "You're welcome," once Sanji's back was turned.

The actual presentation wasn't as warm and fuzzy. Zeff had hated the soup, hated all of it, told him it was all terrible, awful, and Sanji had been ready to launch himself at the old man and kick him into a coma when Zeff had offered to let him start washing dishes at the Baratie.

"Dishes?"

Zeff nodded at the empty plates and bowls between them. "You can't work in the restaurant as a chef until you can keep up. You took forever to make the soup you made tonight. You start with dishes, learn the pace, and then we'll see."

Sanji had lit up. "We'll see? Maybe?"

Zeff nodded again. "Dishes and maybe, we'll see."

Sanji was smiling madly as he collected the plates and bowls from dinner and immediately set to washing everything and tidying up and displaying his aptitude for doing the dishes. He'd show that old man.

He had not been prepared for the popularity of Zeff's shitty restaurant. He had not been able to keep pace at first. He'd been buried in mountains of dishes, all disgusting, and he was barely tall enough to reach into the sink—he had to stand on a milk carton—and it was torture.

Two months later, he was the fastest dishwasher in the kitchen and there was no need to keep paying anyone else to do it. Which had led Sanji to a revelation.

"Zeff, will you pay me for the dishes?" Sanji had asked him one day as he rubbed his hands dry with a towel. The old man had laughed at him.

"I'll give you a dollar for every hundred dishes you wash."

Sanji had nodded. He had very little concept of money. It sounded fair.

It took longer than anticipated to amass ten dollars, but he'd done it, and he had traded it in at the cashier for a ten dollar bill, smiling to himself. It wasn't that he wasn't a good enough chef—that definitely wasn't it. He knew he was a great cook. Zeff was full of shit, he was certain of that. So it had to be something else—there must've been another reason why the old man wouldn't let him be a chef already. He'd proven he could keep up, he could speak enough English to get by when necessary—definitely enough to get by in the kitchen.

It must be because he was still a kid. So Sanji would show Zeff that even though he was young, he was an adult. Or, he might as well have been. He took care of himself, and now he worked for his own money and could spend it on what he pleased.

So he decided he'd buy cigarettes. That's what adults did. Children didn't smoke cigarettes. In France, everyone he knew smoked. It made sense to him that this was the natural way to go about things.

And that was how he wound up in the seedier part of town, a ten dollar bill in his pocket, searching the streets. It wasn't long before he located his target.

He jogged across the street and approached the older homeless man he'd seen around there before.

"Excuse me," he said to him, and the dirty old man looked up at him.

Sanji forced a smile. He'd practiced this part by himself. He held out his ten dollar bill to the bum and recited the phrase he'd memorized and enunciated clearly and nearly flawlessly.

"If you buy me a pack of cigarettes with this, you can keep the change."

The homeless man smiled. "What kind'ya want?"

Sanji faltered. "What kind?" he repeated. Kind? What nice? No. Wait. Type. Kind was also type. Type was also with a computer. Fucking English. "Which one?"

"Uh, yeah?" the bum paused, giving Sanji a look as the kid defaulted back to his thick accent.

"Uh... Marlboro? Camel? I don't know, ah... You choose. Okay? And you can keep the change?"

The bum snorted. "Sure."

Sanji watched him closely, ducked behind the hood of a car across the street, as the bum went into the liquor store and picked up a small bottle of clear alcohol for himself and, yes, a pack of cigarettes for Sanji. The blond grinned as the homeless man approached him and tossed him the pack.

"Thank you!" Sanji said, and the man shrugged, and Sanji took the back alleys home, and he lit his first cigarette with a lighter that he stole from Zeff that the old man used to light cigars, and he choked and hacked and coughed and loved it.

It'd taken Zeff a while to notice.

"Have you been smoking goddamn cigarettes?" he'd asked when they were sitting at the table for dinner, leaning over to smell Sanji.

"So what?" he'd responded, jerking away and looking over at him, and Zeff glared back. "I'm an adult now, right?" he'd grinned.

"You're an idiot, is what you are. You're going to be an even worse chef, you won't be able to smell anything."

Sanji shrugged. "You don't let me cook anyway."

They hadn't spoken much after that.

He'd imagined school would get better after he could speak more of the language. He was wrong. The more he tried to communicate, the more he regretted it. He didn't know why he opened his mouth. Zeff was fine to talk to, even if he was a shitty old man. The kids at his school were assholes.

Things went from bad to worse. It was frustrating enough to not be able to communicate. It was utterly enraging to be made fun of for attempting it.

It was nearing the end of the school year when he finally lost his shit.

"Does everyone wear their hair like that in France?"

"Does everyone in France look retarded?"

"Is that what fashion is like in _Frahnce?_"

He was walking home from school. It was warm out. He was focusing on the weather. And he was also being followed.

"Excuseh me, can yoo tehl me whear isseh twalet?"

"I 'ave to takah fat sheet, I ate zoooo mooch French food for le breakfast!"

He was ignoring them, he was completely unaware of the group of six boys tailing just behind him.

"Oh, I'ma zo sooree, I cannotta help beeing a, ah, smelly Frenchman-"

Sanji was still walking. Staring straight ahead. Clenching his jaw so fucking hard and his hands were shaking.

"What iz diis dayorant you speak of?"

"In France, wee oh-nly eat—"

Sanji turned on his heel, dropped his backpack onto the sidewalk, and hurled himself at the boy in the middle of the group.

"You'll eat my fucking fist!" Sanji shouted at him, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and slamming his fist into his face, over and over as hard as he could, and several other boys were yanking him away, twisting him around, and Sanji felt a white hot burning pain explode across his nose and his mouth.

He tasted blood and he struck out at them and thrashed and yelled until he was on the ground, held down by the group, being kicked in the ribs and the stomach and he felt like he was going to fucking vomit.

"You can't beat all of us, are you fucking retarded!" one shouted, leaning over him.

Sanji bucked from under their grip, his chin dripping blood, and he freed his leg and kicked the kid straight in the face, and his opponent stumbled backwards, clutching his mouth, and Sanji was reduced to a punching bag.

"Tu sais combien de temps ta mere met pour chier?" Sanji said when he was finally granted a momentary reprieve. He sucked a long, wet breath into his lungs, and his whole body hurt so bad in so many places that his mind was screaming at him, panicking, alarms were going off in his head, but he was almost numb to it all, almost, past the point of logical response, and his voice was steady as he swallowed and said, "Neuf mois."

His eyes were closed and his mouth was warm and maybe he was missing a tooth. Yeah. He was. He tongued the new hole in his bottom row of teeth at the back of his mouth.

The six boys stood around him. "We can't understand what you're saying, and you sound fucking stupid. Do you want us to beat your ass some more? If you got something to say, say it in English."

Sanji was flat on his back on the sidewalk, and he opened his eyes, looking past them, up at the blue sky above him. "Fuck you. Fuck you and your lives. Eat shit. All of you."

Swearing in English wasn't as fun as swearing in French, but he felt his point had been well received as he was awarded another kick to his ribs, and he curled in on his side, coughing hard, and they left him there.

Once they were far, far away from him, and he'd found his breath again, and his entire body was on fire, like a white-hot all-over burning sort of fire, and aching and bloody, and he was actually visibly shaking, almost unable to see straight, he sat up and crawled on his hands and knees over to his backpack, and he dug through it and found his pack of cigarettes with the lighter shoved in the cellophane, and he lit one and sat there in the grass next to the sidewalk and smoked the entire thing before dragging himself to his feet.

Zeff raised his eyebrows at him once he arrived home.

"Damn, brat, you got your ass kicked."

Sanji nodded and dropped his bag on the floor next to the door. "Assholes."

"You okay?"

"I'm okay."

"You should try making some friends sometime. That might work out better."

Sanji scrunched his nose at the idea, which he immediately regretted because it hurt like all hell.

"Shut up. I don't want to be friends. I hate all of them. Fuck them all." Sanji walked over to the mirror that hung in the hallway and got a look at himself and grimaced. He gingerly touched his cheekbone, which was bright red and still bleeding a little from when his face had been shoved against the concrete sidewalk.

Zeff watched him from the couch. "You shouldn't get into fights. You could mess up your hands, and then you'll never be a chef."

Sanji whipped around and shouted at him, "So what, if you never let me cook! Who cares! You—you're just as, as shitty as the rest of them! You think I'm a kid! Just like them! You'll _never_ let me cook! I'll wash dishes my entire life with you, shitty old man."

"You _are_ just a kid! You're barely ten years old! You should be outside with other people your age, not spending all your time being pissed off and working in the restaurant! Enjoy your youth, brat!"

Instead of saying anything, Sanji turned and walked down the hallway, going to the bathroom and slamming and locking the door behind him, and he cranked on the shower and tried to forget the entire day.

When he finally emerged over half an hour later, the apartment was empty and Sanji was glad for it. He went to his bedroom and pulled on an old t-shirt and pants and laid on his bed, glaring at the ceiling, and he felt like he got hit by a truck.

Twenty minutes later, Zeff kicked open his door, and he sat up too quickly and held his pounding head. The old man walked over and dropped an old notebook on the bed next to him. Sanji looked down at it and then up at Zeff again.

"Those are the recipes for the main dishes at the Baratie. Start memorizing them."

For the first time in a very long time, Sanji grinned. He smiled so hard that it hurt his face. He hardly felt it. He picked up the old yellow notebook and flipped through it. He didn't see Zeff's face, quiet and happy as he watched the blond boy pour over his recipes. Sanji's eyes didn't—couldn't—leave the pages in his lap.

"Thanks, old man. Thank you so much."

* * *

The kitchen echoed with shouts, the clinks and clangs of pots and cutlery, the sizzle and hiss of cooking food, and the steady roar of all of the devices to bake, broil and sear. It was hot and chaotic, and even though Sanji barked out sharp orders at his co-workers every few moments, when it was just him and the ingredients, the corners of his lips always climbed upward.

Sanji could hear his shift manager hollering about something from just outside of the kitchen. But then, that was no surprise—that prick Fullbody was always angry about something. Usually something ridiculous, or, even more likely, something that was actually the shift manager's own fault. From the decibel of his shouts, Sanji felt deeply confident in his assessment that it was, in fact, the latter. His boss was a fucking idiot.

Gritting his teeth, Sanji refocused back on the twenty-some odd tasks he was currently performing. It was, presumably, the tail-end of the dinner rush, and he was working on the last dozen or so orders in his queue.

It hadn't been a particularly busy night, but even slower nights were always fairly fast-paced at Mariejois. It was the only highly acclaimed restaurant within at least a ten or fifteen mile radius, so they never had a lack of demand.

Since he had spent over half his life in a kitchen, some of the tasks that took the older chefs awhile to get the hang of were just second nature to him. Sanji didn't need to think and plan and contemplate—when it came to cooking, his body reacted with precision. The other cooks were by no means inexperienced—it was just that Sanji could probably cook circles around every last one of them. And usually did.

Just as he finished and plated the last of the dishes he'd been working on, the double-doors to the kitchen burst open, and his eyes snapped upwards. One of the waitresses—a pretty young woman with twin ponytails that fell loosely along the back of her shoulders—stormed in, her cheeks ruddy and her eyes puffy.

She lowered her head and walked towards the back, away from everyone else.

Sanji threw down the rag he'd been using to wipe down his section and followed her.

"What happened?"

She wouldn't look at him, not directly, and it was obvious, the way she was gritting her teeth, her hands still clenched in fists, that she was trying extremely hard to contain herself, her eyes red and watering.

"Rika, what happened?"

Her lips slightly parted, she continued avoiding his eyes. "It's stupid, it doesn't matter."

"It obviously matters." Sanji bent over at his hip, lowering his head until he was eye level with her.

"It's nothing, it's just... God, that jerk Fullbody," she barely managed to choke out, tears flooding her eyes.

Feeling eyes on him, Sanji turned around and realized half of the kitchen was staring at them. He turned his attention to Rika again, reaching behind her and placing his fingers on the small of her back, gently pushing her toward the rear door leading out of he kitchen. "Come on, let's go out back for a few minutes."

"Didn't you already have your break—"

"Who cares, let's go." He turned around for a moment, spotting a tall busboy who was depositing a tray full of dirty dishes into the sink. "Hey, you," Sanji called out brusquely, jutting an index finger in his direction. When he had his attention, the pointing finger shifted to the line of plates he'd just placed underneath the heating lights. "All those orders need to go to table 26."

The busboy's eyes briefly flitted to Rika's flushed face. "Uh, no problem, I got it," he said, quickly grabbing the plates and hurrying away.

Sanji and Rika slipped out the back door, walking around the dumpsters until they found an open stretch of wall. Sanji leaned against the brick, fishing in his pocket. "So, what'd that asshole do this time?" he asked, as he jammed a cigarette between his lips, cupping his hand around the end of it as he flicked on the lighter.

"You probably heard him screaming his head off," Rika said, her voice considerably calmer now. "I was waiting on this guy who ordered a bunch of stuff, and when I brought him his check, he couldn't pay for it. I didn't know what else to do so I got Fullbody, and, I don't know, he totally flipped. Started screaming at me and stuff."

"At you? That's not your fault, though," Sanji said sharply, a swell of rage flooding through him.

"I know!" she practically shouted, her face flushing again.

"What the hell does he think you're gonna do, ask people if they have money up front? We're not a fucking McDonald's."

"He said I should've known better, letting 'someone like that' just order whatever they wanted."

"'Someone like that?' Did he actually say that?" While Sanji wasn't quite sure what his dumbshit of a boss might have meant by that, the rage bubbling within him was quickly rising to a boil. He took a deep drag from his cigarette, rapidly burning through the tobacco rod.

"Yeah, his exact words," she said, wiping away what might have been a tear with the back of her hand.

"What the hell is wrong with him? It's that fucking cocksucker's job to handle these situations, not yours," Sanji said, pausing briefly and glancing up at her again to add in a quick, "Sorry." Rika actually rolled her eyes at him—fair enough, they'd worked together for over a year and she was certainly familiar with his vernacular, but, still.

He took a final long drag on his cigarette before dropping it on the ground, stomping down on it with finality. "I'm not gonna let this shit slide."

Sanji brushed past her, making long, agitated strides toward the back door.

"What are you doing?" Rika called after him, almost running to keep up with his pace.

"I'm going to give Fullbody a piece of my mind."

"What are you talking about? He's with that customer right now! Don't go out there, oh my god, he's going to get so freaking mad."

"Like I give a shit!" Sanji called back at her, striding through the kitchen with purpose, bursting through the double doors into the lobby of the restaurant.

He was seeing red, barely paying any attention to the throngs of customers, most of whom seemed like they were getting ready to leave. Several tables of customers were beginning to rise from their seats, sliding back heavy, upholstered chairs, as they pulled themselves away from thick white tablecloths.

But Sanji was fuming, and could barely look twice at any of them. That asshole, there was no reason to yell at the employees like that, especially a sweet young woman like Rika. Just because that stupid bastard barely knew how to do his job didn't mean he should make others feel bad for it.

The lights were low, most of the lit candles on the table tops brighter than the warm glow of the ornate light fixtures adorning the ceilings. But even in the low lights, Sanji was easily about to make out that miserable prick, that make-shift boss who got to pretend he was in charge a couple of nights a week when the regular manager wasn't quickly spotted the stupid mop of disgusting pink-hued hair, standing arms-crossed in front of a table in the corner of the restaurant. He was puffing out his chest in self-importance as he glared down at the scrappy young man sitting in the booth.

As he approached Fullbody, Sanji only gave the customer a quick glance. He was mildly surprising; he was much younger than the usual Mariejois patrons, who were middle-aged-to-elderly, and he was a little... bedraggled, maybe? His shaggy, dark hair was slightly in need of a combing, and his clothes were very casual and rumpled. Even as he was likely going through a very difficult conversation, he worn an airy, careless smile.

But then his attention was turned back to Fullbody, his face contorting into a scowl. Sanji approached the table, stepping right up next to him.

"I need to talk to you," Sanji said lowly, interrupting Fullbody mid-sentence.

He turned toward Sanji, his eyes wide, lips curled back as he clenched his teeth in anger. "I'm with a customer, what are you doing out here?" he asked in an angry whisper.

"I said, I need to talk to you," he repeated, keeping his voice hushed but not quite whispering. "Right now."

"I am dealing with something right now, get back in the kitchen where you belong and do your goddamn job," Fullbody practically hissed, his eyes bugging in rage.

"I can get into it right here, if you'd prefer."

Fullbody turned back toward the customer, still gritting his teeth as he forced his face to return to a slightly more natural expression. "If you could excuse me for just a moment."

"Sure," the customer said, smiling widely.

Fullbody grabbed Sanji by the forearm, yanking him away from the table toward the hallway leading to the restrooms. When they were out of earshot of any customers, Fullbody grabbed Sanji by the shoulders, his face contorting in fury. "What the _hell _is wrong with you?"

"You're what's wrong with me. You can't treat your employees like they're fucking dirt," Sanji replied sharply, ripping Fullbody's hands off of him. "And don't you ever fucking lay your hands on me again."

"I don't know what you're talking about, but you can't talk to me like that," Fullbody declared with a swell of importance.

"I'm talking about Rika."

"About Rika?" Fullbody sneered at the mention of her name. "I'm not even done dealing with that stupid bitch for the mess she's gotten the restaurant into right now."

Sanji's hand clenched into a fist, his eyebrow twitching. "How fucking dramatic are you... how is one customer not paying a 'mess' for the restaurant? You're just a lazy bastard who doesn't want to deal with anything that takes you away from slacking off in the back office."

"All you do is throw chunks of meat into a pan, you don't know shit about what I go through each and every day to make sure you keep getting a paycheck."

Sanji closed his eyes for a minute, forcing himself to steady his breathing, shoving his hands inside of his pockets. If he didn't, he just might punch him. It could happen. It was going to happen if he thought about it too hard. He swallowed, hard, trying to move past the words he wanted to say—because there was a more important thing he needed to convey to this dumbshit right now.

"What you did to Rika—that's no way to treat anyone at all, and certainly not that extremely nice girl who is _infinitely_ better at her job than you'll ever be at yours," Sanji finally said.

"I can treat her however I like, I hired her."

"You didn't hire anybody here and you don't even have the authority to fire her if you wanted, _shift _manager."

"You better watch how you're talking to me, you piece of shit, because after the owner finds out how you lipped off to me tonight, you're going to—"

"Listen, Fullbody, you're a little new here, so you have some shit to figure out still," Sanji interrupted, his voice trilling with anger. "For one, the owner cares a lot more about their shift manager making a huge fucking scene by yelling at some punk kid who can't pay his bill, and having all these rich fucks seeing and talking about it and making complaints and never coming back because we look unprofessional as hell, than losing out on a single fucking dinner check. There's protocol for situations like this, so learn it, maybe. Shouldn't you know that, with your _authority _and all?" His words dripped with condescension.

Fullbody's lip quivered in rage, his face flushed. But it seemed he had run out of things to say. He walked past Sanji, letting his shoulder ram into Sanji's as he brushed past him, heading back to the table where the customer was presumably still waiting.

Sanji hovered near the entrance of the hallway, trying to make out some of the conversation. He heard the customer make a few surprisingly relaxed comments, and Fullbody was saying "You're not really leaving me a whole lot of options here," and "I'm going to have to make a call."

As Sanji watched Fullbody walk away from the table and head toward the double-doors to the kitchen—presumably toward the back office, to make a call to the owner—a ridiculous idea came to Sanji.

He approached the table, getting a better look at the customer.

He was young—probably right around Sanji's age—and for some reason, even though he was in big trouble, he wore an aloof smile on his face.

"Oh, hey, you're that guy," the customer said. "Looks like whatever you said to that manager guy got him pretty mad. I thought the vein in his head was gonna pop right open when he came back over here."

"Yeah, I might've gotten him a little rattled," Sanji smiled faintly. Glancing behind him, confirming Fullbody was nowhere in sight, he slid into the other side of the booth, leaning forward. "So, listen... Do you really not have _any_ money? Or credit cards or anything?"

"I've got about forty bucks on me, but that's it. Man, the bill was way more than I thought it'd be," the customer replied, seemingly unfazed that Sanji had sat down with him.

"Forty dollars, huh... Yeah, that may not quite cover it," Sanji thought. If he'd just gotten an entree, it could have been close enough for Fullbody to agree to let it slide and just avoid the hassle. But Sanji remembered Rika's comment, about how he had ordered a lot of food. That probably meant he got actual courses. Appetizer and dessert, at least. Sanji reached forward and grabbed the check. His eyes widened as he read the total. "Two hundred and eighty-seven dollars?! Were you here with other people?"

"Nah, it's just me."

Sanji scanned the items on the receipt. "You ordered four entrees and an appetizer, just for yourself?" His eyes searched the table a moment, but he didn't see any to-go containers. "Wait, did you actually finish it?"

"Yeah, of course, it was really good," he said, tilting his head to the side slightly. "But you know, I had no idea the food was going to be so expensive here. Your menu's really confusing, with all those numbers, like, um... 32.5 and 17. I figured they were maybe sizes or something?" He scratched his head. "But that guy with the pink hair told me they were the prices. Even though they didn't have that S thing with the lines or anything?"

S thing with the lines? What the... Did he mean a dollar sign?

Was this guy for real?

"You thought they were... sizes."

"Everything was pretty small here, too," the dark-haired man went on. "I don't really get why everything's so much... I mean, I'm pretty sure I could've gotten like fifteen or twenty cheeseburgers with forty bucks, but I didn't have nearly that much food here."

Was this guy... for real?

"I was going to order more."

Holy. Shit.

"Fullbody might really call the cops over this," Sanji muttered under his breath.

The customer's smile faded as he regarded Sanji with confusion. "What? Why? Can't I just come back with the money?"

"Are you going to have it any time soon?"

"Yeah. Wait. Hold on," he said, frowning deeply as he stared down at the tabletop. "How much is three hundred dollars... that's about... Okay, yeah, I'll have it on Thursday."

"They'd normally let you pay it back in a couple days, as long as they had a copy of your license, but—"

"Oh, I've actually got that!" he exclaimed, pulling a plastic card out of his wallet and slamming it down on the table before Sanji could finish. "So I can come back in a couple days, right?"

"...I was going to say, but, I don't think that guy's going to let you get off with just that now." After all, Fullbody was the type who liked to show off any pathetic little shred of authority he could. It wasn't much, but if he could get this guy arrested, he probably would.

Besides, this wasn't a rich old man who accidentally forgot his wallet—this was a messy young kid who stuck out like a sore thumb inside of this kind of establishment. He was wearing a disheveled t-shirt and shorts, old leather sandals, and he looked like he had been kind of roughed up. Sanji's gaze drifted to his knuckles. Were those scrapes?

But he didn't seem like a bad guy. Just incredibly dumb. Astoundingly, even.

"You're really going to have the money on Thursday?" Sanji asked, leaning back as he stared at him, pressing his hand to his mouth as he sized him up.

"Yeah, definitely," he assured, with a surprisingly genuine grin.

"Alright, so if I—okay, say I cover for you tonight. You'd really be able to pay me back on Thursday, right?" He paused to pinch the bridge of his nose. Shit, he knew this was an awful idea—but when he thought about the look on Fullbody's face when he found out he wasn't going to get to slam down on anybody, it sort of made it feel worth it.

"Yeah, for sure!" the customer exclaimed, his face brightening. "You're really gonna do that for me?"

Sanji nodded uneasily.

"Wow, thanks, man. Hey, what's your name?"

"Sanji."

"Thanks, Sanji!" he smiled with relief, his jubilance rivaling a kid on Christmas. "I'm Luffy, by the way."

"Luffy, huh... Well, I'm going to come to you on Thursday, then. Is this your address?" He asked, jamming a thumb on the driver's license still laying on the table.

"Nah, I don't live there anymore. It's uh... Hold on," he said, pulling out his wallet again. He produced a crumpled piece of paper with dozens of scribbled notes, written in every direction, in what looked like a grade-schooler's penmanship.

"The hell is that?" Sanji asked, frowning at the paper.

"Hold on, I've got my address on here. Umm... It's... Oh, here it is. 20 Thriller Bark Lane."

Thriller Bank Lane... The street name was familiar. "That by the campus?" he asked, squinting.

"By Sabaody? Yeah, it's right next to it. It's a big, cool house."

"Okay. I'm going to be there Thursday afternoon, then." Sanji reached into his back pocket, pulling out his wallet. He'd just cashed a paycheck, so he had plenty of money in there. Counting out fifteen twenty dollar bills, he tossed them on top of the bill. "Now you better cut out of here before my boss gets back."

"Awesome. I owe you one, Sanji!"

"Damn right you do," Sanji muttered.

"See you Thursday!" Luffy called back after him as he made a bee line for the entrance.

Sanji pulled himself to his feet and nonchalantly strolled back toward the kitchen. Just before he reached the double doors, Fullbody sauntered out, wearing a triumphant grin. At first, he ignored Sanji, searching for the customer in the corner booth. When he saw he was gone, his face fell.

"You!" Fullbody shouted at Sanji, spinning around and pointing at him. "Where'd he go?"

"Hmm, where'd who go?"

He scowled. "Who else. That kid in the booth."

"Oh, that guy?" Sanji glanced over his shoulder, shrugging nonchalantly. "I don't know, I think he just paid his bill and left."

"What?! But how—but the police are on their way," he choked, losing his composure for a moment, as he practically ran to the now-empty table, snatching up the wad of twenty dollar bills.

With a smirk, Sanji disappeared back into the kitchen. Rika was standing near the doorway, looking up at him apprehensively.

"Don't worry," Sanji smiled reassuringly, giving her a thumbs up. "We got it squared away."

Later that evening, Fullbody screamed at Sanji for a full ten minutes in the back. But as pissed as he was, Sanji was confident that his job was safe; after all, he was one of the best damn cooks they'd ever had.

Besides, Fullbody could really only get mad at his insubordination. As much as Fullbody wanted to blame him for making him look like such a goddamn fool, as he explained to the police that the customer who had refused to pay somehow miraculously came up with three hundred dollars in cash, he had absolutely no way of proving Sanji had anything to do with it. After all, why would a part time cook and college student throw around that kind of money for a stranger?

Thursday rolled around quickly, and Sanji went to collect his money.

If the house at the end of Thriller Bark Lane had been any less decrepit, Sanji may have been a little worried that he had been given a fake address.

It almost reminded him of a haunted house. Almost. Most of the houses on the road were new but small; he was pretty sure _starter _was the word for it. Not many people would want to live right next to a college campus when they were well into their careers and families and rest of their damn lives, so it seemed like a logical decision on the part of whoever had the houses built to begin with.

So there they were, rows of neat, uniform houses on either side of the street... And then, a short stretch of nothing but overgrown brambles and trees, until he reached these two fucking anomalies at the dead-end of the road.

One of the houses was a fairly reasonable size—not much larger than the starter homes, although clearly many decades older. Instead of being against the road or lined up with a driveway, it kind of looked like the house had been just dropped haphazardly in the middle of an empty lot, the builder not really caring that the front door didn't align with the road in any particular way. It looked like there was a winding driveway that wrapped around to the side of it, leading to garages that looked like they were built after-the-fact and obviously were not part of the original house. Sanji was pretty sure he could hear the sound of someone playing a piano as he walked by it.

But that house wasn't the address that Luffy had given him. Rather, his destination was the absurdly large home at the end of the street that sat there like a shitty mantlepiece. The yard was surprisingly large—for houses in the area, anyway. Most houses were lucky to have a space large enough to hold a small family barbecue without being too overcrowded. But this house had an ample front yard, and it looked like there was undeveloped land behind it. Weird.

"You better really live here, bastard," Sanji muttered under his breath as he walked up to the house. He paused for a moment, taking the last few drags on his cigarette before he stomped out the butt of it under his oxfords.

The house was in even worse condition than he first imagined. Climbing the steps up the porch, he heard the groans and creaks of ancient wood shifting under his feet. He hoped he wasn't going to fall through the fucking floor.

He knocked on the front door, normally at first. After a minute or two of silence from inside of the house, he rapped at the weather-worn wood with a bit more demand, peeling paint flaking off beneath his knuckles. Scowling, he brushed off his hands, glaring at the oversized door.

He waited, and no one came.

"Well, fuck."

Apparently the bastard really wasn't there. What a fucking waste of time.

Although the house was close to the college and his work, he hadn't needed to be at either today, and the shitty apartment he was renting half a room from was over thirty minutes away by bus.

Jamming another cigarette in between his teeth, he contemplated how long he should hang out on the rickety porch. Never mind the time it took for the bus ride, he really need that money. Badly, actually. Three hundred dollars was a lot—it wasn't like he ever had much to spare.

With a sigh, he leaned against the side of the house, forgetting its condition. Then he remembered the flaking paint and, cursing again, angrily tried to brush it off of his shirt and dockers.

Suddenly, the door creaked open behind him. Whirling around, Sanji saw a mop of messy, dark hair. Luffy looked up at him, bleary-eyed and yawning.

"Oh hey, restaurant guy," he said, languidly throwing the door open.

"Uh, hey," Sanji said, suddenly at a loss for words. He kind of looked like hell. His lip was a little swollen and... Was that blood on his shirt?

Also, was that a hoodie with cut-off sleeves?

"That's right, I owe you. It was... Uh... How much," Luffy started digging through his pockets, producing a stack of crumpled twenty dollar bills. He handed Sanji the fistful of bills with a grin. "That's enough, right?"

Dumbfounded, Sanji took the money from him, smoothing out the bills and placing them in a neat stack. After counting, he wordlessly handed back eight of the twenty dollar bills, keeping back the three hundred dollars he was due.

What the hell was wrong with this guy? Sanji could have pocketed all of that, and he would've never known.

"Well, thanks," he said, taking a quick drag from his cigarette. "So, uh, I guess that's it."

"Hey, you wanna come in, I've got meat."

"What?"

"Yeah, come on, my friend brought some meat over. You know how to cook it, right? I'll let you have as much as you want, if you do."

Sanji's gaze swept inside of the house. It was huge and dark and looked pretty empty. He could make out the counter to what looked like a fairly expansive kitchen from the doorway. After hesitating for a moment, he shrugged, muttering, "Sure, why the hell not." He paused to put out his cigarette before he stepped inside, leaving the butt resting on the porch next to the door. He'd take care of it when he left. If he remembered.

He didn't really understand why he was going—but his instinct wasn't telling him there was anything onerous waiting for him inside. Even if the house sort of looked like the set for a B-horror movie. If anything, Luffy's aura was pretty relaxed—and maybe tinged with a hint of excitement, which Sanji presumed was over getting someone to cook for him.

The house was just as huge inside as it looked on the outside. The condition of the place didn't seem much different, either.

The wooden floors were old and scuffed, in desperate need of a polishing. Refinishing. Whatever made them look like they weren't old, rotting planks.

The walls had _wallpaper_, of all things. It reminded him of a restored old mansion he had seen as part of a tour for school when he was younger—all the fixtures and the decorations were made to mimic how the place looked in the early 19-whatevers. Except this place wasn't restored, and the mauve-and-white patterned paper was entirely peeled off in some places, revealing the dingy drywall underneath.

That, and the place was pretty sparsely furnished... for the size of it, anyway. Most noticeably, there were two ancient couches and a loveseat near the entrance, in a large area that was clearly functioning as the living room. None of it matched. Just like the wood of the coffee table in between the couches wasn't the same color as the wood of the large, clunky dining table. And the bar stools near the edge of the kitchen counter were metal—not a damn thing matched.

It was so quiet inside.

"So, uh... Is there anyone else here?"

For a split second—so quickly, Sanji thought he may have imagined it—Luffy's face fell. But the leisurely expression returned in an instant, and he shook his head from side to side. "Nah, I'm the only one who lives here right now. But hey, are you looking for a place? You can move in!"

Sanji shifted uneasily on his feet, not sure how to respond to the off-putting question—there was no way he was serious, after all.

"Kitchen, right?" Sanji asked, nodding toward the countertops, and the large archway to the right that served as the kitchen entrance. He was pleasantly surprised by how expansive it was, actually.

"Huh, all this stuff is actually newer, isn't it," he murmured, mostly to himself. Not new—but new enough to actually have some appliances made from the last half-century.

"Sure, I guess. Open the fridge!"

"Yeah, okay," Sanji replied, swinging open the creaky door and squatting down in front of it.

There was meat, all right—and not a lot else. Pork chops, flank steaks, spareribs. He could tell just by looking at it that it had probably been in his fridge for a couple of days. "Uh, this stuff needs to get cooked," Sanji told him, narrowing his eyes as he looked at the condition of the meat. Good cuts—but they wouldn't be good for long.

"Yeah, that's the point," Luffy replied with a laugh, leaning over the top of the door, looking down at Sanji. "You'll make it, won't you?"

"You want me to make all of this?" he asked incredulously.

"Yep. You can, right?"

"I can but..." he trailed off. Well, it's not like he had anything better to do, anyway. And he was pretty sure it would go bad otherwise—he really hated seeing food go to waste.

"Fine, but we're going to need to clean up in here a little first," Sanji replied with a sigh, glancing over at the dirty countertop and sink full of dishes.

Luffy hummed excitedly as Sanji put him to work, first wiping down the surfaces and then drying dishes while he washed them.

"Uh, how have you been cooking the meat, anyway?" Sanji asked, noticing there were no pots or pans dirty.

"I microwaved it."

"What." Sanji nearly dropped the dish he was holding. He desperately wished there was some way he could have misheard that, but it was pretty quiet other than the sound of running water. And Luffy's voice was, well, loud.

"Usually I don't cook it, but there was so much, I thought I'd try. So I put it in a bowl in the microwave for awhile."

"Yeah, don't... don't ever do that," Sanji grimaced, finishing the last plate and handing it to Luffy. "You have pans though, right?"

"Probably," he said cheerfully, setting down the plate that he sort of forgot to completely dry as he started pulling open cupboards and drawers.

Everything was in disarray. Sanji's hand twitched—it was so disorganized, even though there was so much space to do a great set up. He was already imagining where he would be keeping things, if it were his kitchen. Not to mention, it seemed like there were a few high quality pieces of cookware shoved in among the bric a brac.

Sanji started opening cupboards as well. Noticing something he could use, he pulled a heavy stainless steel pan out of a cabinet beneath one of the counters. Multiple empty plastic containers, sporting colorful branding logos like Cool Whip and Country Crock, exploded outward in the process, spilling onto the floor, along with various other items including a cookie sheet, a couple of spatulas and miscellaneous measuring cups.

"Is this all your stuff?"

"Nah, it was just in the house," he replied, bending over to haphazardly shove the plastic containers and cups back in the cupboard. "So, are you gonna cook all of it?"

"Yeah, I guess," Sanji sighed. He didn't have much reason not to.

"Really?" Luffy asked, his grin the widest Sanji had seen yet—and it was damn infectious, too. In spite of himself, he found himself smiling back a little.

"Yeah, it's going to go bad soon. If you have spices, I can probably do something good to it, too."

"Sure," Luffy said, pulling open two long drawers. They were filled to the brim with single-serving containers—ketchup, mayonnaise, soy sauce, jelly, hot sauce, and god-only-knows what else—and packets of salt and pepper. Grinning, Luffy grabbed several of the paper packets and tossed them on the counter next to the stove. "There you go!"

"Uh... just salt and pepper?"

"Yeah. Those are spices, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Sanji sighed. It was okay though—he could work with minimal ingredients.

Two hours later, he was back in the kitchen, packing leftover meat into the shitty recycled plastic containers that had exploded on him when he first found a pan.

Granted, there wasn't much of the meat left—now Sanji understood how Luffy had been able to eat so many entrees at the restaurant the other day. Still, there were at least some leftovers for him.

But suddenly, packaging leftover meat seemed like the most unimportant thing in the world. Because Luffy, who had brought up his earlier offer of letting Sanji move in, had just dropped a bombshell that made him instantly stop what he was doing as he spun around to stare at him, his mouth agape.

"There's no fucking way that's true."

"It is, though. That's all it costs to rent a room here."

"Like, your _own_ room?"

"...Yeah?" He scratched his head, like it was a strange question.

Sanji's mind reeled. "There's no way. I'm paying more than that to _share_ a room with some asshole right now."

"Move in here, then," Luffy said, surprisingly matter-of-fact.

"Yeah right, if they're that cheap, I'm sure they're reserved. Fall semester starts next month and this is right next to the damn school."

"I told you, there's no one living here."

Sanji stared at Luffy, trying to assess whether or not he was messing with him. He was a kind of goofy guy—but right now, he didn't look like he was kidding. In fact, he looked dead serious.

"Uh. I'm gonna have to think about it," he said finally.

"You wanna see the rooms? You can pick out whatever one you like."

A bit dumbfounded, Sanji let Luffy lead him through the house and give him an ambling tour. Although the things Luffy pointed out didn't matter that much—like the creepy old man picture on the wall of the dining room, or the alien symbol someone had carved into the wood under one of the area rugs—Sanji was able to get a better look at things. The first story was mostly wide open, with the kitchen, living room and dining room being one shared space. There was a large stairwell to the left of the kitchen that led to the upper story. And to the left of that, there was a short hallway, with three doors near the end of it.

Luffy stopped at the base of the stairwell for a moment, looked at the three doors.

"There's a room over there, but I don't know, it doesn't seem like it'd be _your _room," Luffy mentioned, waving a hand at the direction of one of the doors before he started climbing the stairs. Sanji wasn't exactly sure what the hell that meant, but they didn't stop to look at it, in any event. One of the doors was open, and he could see it led to a small bathroom. The other door, he wasn't so sure—a basement, maybe?

The stairwell was almost excessively wide, and the steps were covered with ancient-looking burgundy carpeting that looked like it may not have been cleaned in decades. A little gross—but Sanji wasn't really one for walking around barefoot, anyway.

The bedrooms upstairs—four, in total—were in the same condition as the first floor. They all had similar (although mismatched) furniture: a bed with some kind of end table, an old desk and chair, and some kind of dresser or bureau. Probably typical, for rooms for rent near the college.

But they were all pretty fucking big, somehow. Way bigger than the piece-of-shit room he'd been sharing with some ill-tempered guy who got up at five in the morning every damn day, rain or shine—well, it was always shine, this time of year—to do his stupid jogging routine, banging everything around in the process, even if Sanji had just gotten home a few hours earlier.

"So, since you're first, you get to pick whatever one you want."

"Since I'm first?"

"Yeah, you know. To rent something."

"Wait, none of these are yours," Sanji realized. "You do live here, right?"

"Yeah, of course. It's just none of these."

Shrugging it off, Sanji took a long, wistful look into the bedroom they were currently standing in the doorway of. It was near the end of the hall, right next to the bathroom, and the bed was actually a full size, instead of a twin. There were windows on both the back and side walls—which probably meant he could get a pretty good cross breeze, even on a warm day like today.

And from this location, he was pretty sure he could walk to Sabaody University in the amount of time it took him to take the bus. Same for work. And old or not, the kitchen was pretty impressive...

"Well, shit," he muttered underneath his breath; he was dangerously close to making what might have been a rather reckless decision. But it was getting more difficult by the minute to even think about sharing that awful room he currently lived in for even a few more days.

Luffy grinned knowingly. "So you're gonna take this one, then?"

"Shit," he muttered again, his gaze locked on the inside of the room. "I think I am."

* * *

It only took two trips for Usopp to move all his shit in. Luffy had helped him move his carpenter's chest up the creaky stairs, and it was fucking difficult only because the stupid fucking kid kept making him laugh, and that made his limbs go limp, and he was having such trouble holding up his end. Even with all of the tools he has amassed over the past several years temporarily removed from the chest's drawers, it was still ridiculously heavy.

Usopp had only met Luffy a couple days prior. He'd been up at the school, pacing the used books in the shop, grimacing at the price tags. Used, even! He'd mentally decided to try to find the books online, and yeah, he shouldn't have waited this long to do it, it was the beginning of August already, he knew that, but he had things to do. Like work in a little coffee shop at the worst hours and try to figure out what the hell he was doing otherwise.

After he'd given up on required text shopping, he'd walked out to his car, moving slow in the sweltering heat, and arrived upon a tanned kid with black hair and a motor scooter in a few pieces in the parking spot next to his. Well, maybe not really a kid—he was probably about Usopp's age. He felt younger though, somehow.

"Uh, do you need help?" Usopp asked, almost regretting it when the other guy's head whipped around and looked at him like he was some sort of Godsend.

"Can you fix these things? I have no idea what I'm doing. I thought if I took it apart, I might understand it, but I'm starting to feel like it was a bad idea," he told him, gesturing to all the parts—the internal components of the scooter—spread out around him.

"How'd you even get it apart if you don't know what you're doing?"

"Well, a lot of it was screwed in, so I just... unscrewed it."

"With what?"

He held up a screwdriver and a set of wrenches. "I borrowed these from the engineering department."

Usopp took a step towards him and looked around at the mess the other guy had made. It was too hot outside for this bullshit. He shouldn't have said anything. Damn it.

"What was wrong with it in the first place?" Usopp asked, leaning against his own car. A station wagon. Wood-paneled, with a little bit of rust around the edges. Not glorious, nowhere near new or even good condition, but it got the job done.

"It dies when it idles. I got it here, but it seems kinda ... done. I was gonna call someone, but my phone died too. All my stuff died, basically. And also, I lost my phone. I mean, it's probably here at the school somewhere. Maybe. I dunno." He shrugged, not coming off as very concerned with his misplaced phone. "Anyway, can you fix this?"

"Probably not. Give me that screwdriver. And stand back—just, stand far away. In fact, you know what, maybe go look for your phone. Don't touch any of this anymore. Ever again."

The young man grinned and held out his screwdriver. "Thanks."

"Uh-huh." Usopp took said screwdriver and grabbed the wrench set and sat down on the warm asphalt next to the scooter, which was turned on its side, and he picked up a black cylindrical piece on the ground next to him. "This is the oil filter, why would you even—"

"I don't know, it looked like it could be a thing!"

Usopp looked over at the other man, who was peering in his car. He had a lot of his shit in there, as he was, ideally, moving. Away from the dorms. To hell with the dorms. "You're a flipping idiot."

The young man laughed and it was way too hot outside for this bullshit. High tops were a bad choice. He should've worn sandals. And maybe shorts. Damn it.

It took Usopp all of twenty minutes to get the scooter back to its original state. And in doing so, he assessed that there probably wasn't anything wrong with the motor, and the spark plugs were still all good, surprisingly, and the jets weren't clogged, and the choke was connected fine, so...

He stood up and righted the scooter, flipping down the kickstand, and he opened up the seat and leaned over, peering down into it. The sun was starting to go down, and he pulled his phone from his back pocket and shined it into the seat opening.

"Toss me the screwdriver," Usopp said to the other man, who had made himself at home sitting next to the tools that Usopp had left on the hood of his car.

His throw was terrible, but Usopp's hand-eye coordination made up for it, and he caught the screwdriver with his left hand and stuck it into the opening under the seat and tightened a gold screw with a spring around it.

"You got the keys?" Usopp asked, suddenly wondering if this guy had lost those, too.

He hopped off the car and searched his pockets and produced a small set of keys, his facial features lighting up. Maybe he'd had the same thought as Usopp. "I do!"

"Start it up."

He hopped on the scooter and did so, and the motor turned over and fired up and hummed as it sat there in neutral. He looked extremely impressed.

"Your idle screw was getting loose," Usopp told him over the drone of the little engine.

"What's your name?" he asked him.

"Usopp."

"Weird name. I'm Luffy—do you go to school here?"

Usopp narrowed his eyes at Luffy's review of his name. The guy's name was _Luffy,_ and Usopp was the weird one of the two?

"Yeah," Usopp told him, walking over to his car, his hands now dirty and blackened.

"What's your major?" Luffy continued, following Usopp around to the driver's side door, letting his scooter run.

"Engineering—listen, do you want me to take those tools back for you? Will you actually remember?"

"An engineering major, huh... so you can probably fix, like, a lot of shit."

"Not really. I'm not a handyman. Scooters just aren't necessarily super complex." Usopp unlocked his car, but before he could open the door, the shorter man put a hand on the window, interrupting his process.

"You looking for a place to stay?"

"What makes you ask that?" Usopp shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

Luffy nodded to his car—specifically, the many boxes and bags stacked in there. "It looks like you got most of your life packed into this thing. So either you live in it, or you're moving. Right? Is that not right?"

"I'm looking for a place," Usopp told him.

Luffy grinned. "Perfect. In exchange for fixing my scooter, you can come live at my place!"

"Your place?"

"Yeah, I stay in this big house, and there's only one other guy there now, but there's plenty of room and the rent is real cheap. Like stupid cheap. It's not far away. Here, you can just follow me there in your car and check it out. It's _really awesome_."

And Usopp actually _had_ followed him, oddly enough, and he actually _did_ check out the house, and yeah, it was a little decrepit, and it wasn't exactly pretty, but when Luffy told him how much rent was a month, he'd had a hard time coming up with a good excuse as to why he shouldn't move in, peeling wallpaper be damned.

So that was that.

Two trips, and he was moved in.

Living with Luffy was… interesting. He'd never met someone with such extreme highs and lows. He was either full of energy, laughing loudly and almost breaking things and in and out of the house like a whirlwind, or he was dead asleep, nearly unable to be woken.

He treated Usopp like they'd been friends for years.

After living there for only a few days, Usopp already felt like he was at home. It was weird. And he couldn't really explain it. It was the way he sat around that giant living room/dining room/kitchen area downstairs, sprawled over one of the couches with Luffy hanging off the big love seat, telling Usopp about all the trouble he'd gotten himself into throughout life. And Usopp laughed openly, drinking a beer and wasting away the afternoon, still a little wired from his morning shift at the coffee shop. Those kinds of moments.

And then, there were periods of time when Luffy wouldn't say much at all. He became more of an observer, sitting and watching with a smile on his face. And other times, Usopp noticed he would go and be by himself, climbing through one of the upstairs bedroom windows and onto the roof, where he'd lay on his back for stretches of time, staring at the sky. Usopp had only discovered this when Luffy had scared the shit out of him by coming in through his window one evening. After that, Luffy had insisted Usopp climb up there with him and check out the view.

It really was a nice view. And then again, Usopp wasn't a fan of falling off a roof and breaking his neck, so he hadn't stayed up there very long.

His other roommate, Sanji, was another interesting character. And an amazing cook. The first night Usopp was officially moved in, Sanji had prepared a huge meal for the three of them, and it was very likely that it'd been the best food Usopp's tongue had ever had the privilege of tasting.

The blond was, for the most part, fairly nice. He had a temper, though, that'd nearly startled Usopp out of his chair one afternoon.

Sanji's voice was smooth and low and controlled, and he had a casual, easy way of talking that made Usopp feel like he could relax. But the second or third day he'd been there, Sanji had caught Luffy digging around the fridge, and Usopp got a taste of the decibel level Sanji was perfectly capable of reaching. Sanji's nature could go from easy-going to straight bellicose like he was flipping some kind of switch. Like pressing a button.

"_Hey!_ What the fuck are you doing, you little shit!" Sanji had shouted as he walked in the door, spotting Luffy across the room in the kitchen.

"I'm not doing anything!" Luffy chirped, ducking away and making a break for the couch. Usopp became an unwilling buffer.

"You're in there eating all the food I bought to fucking make dinner, you shitty little thief!" Sanji yelled, stalking towards Luffy, who circled around, keeping the couch between him and the irate man.

"I'm not a thief! I'm, uh, I was… borrowing it?"

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life and it doesn't change the fact that I'm gonna kick you through the wall if I catch you again," Sanji threatened, looking like he entirely meant every word he'd said.

Usopp was frozen, the page of the book he'd been reading half-turned. Sanji's blue eyes fell from Luffy to Usopp.

"If you catch that little fuck in the fridge again, kick his ass," Sanji commanded.

"Uh, you got it." Usopp hadn't known what else to say.

Honestly, Usopp liked Sanji a lot. Despite being a little scary, he was pretty enjoyable. Usopp didn't even mind that he smoked almost constantly. A weird part of him really liked the smell. Luffy didn't seem to care either, and Sanji often paced the house with an ash tray in hand as he discussed things with Luffy or Usopp or got stuck on the phone for ages, yelling at someone Usopp only knew as "shitty old man."

Sanji didn't seem able to talk on the phone and stand still, which Usopp was a little entertained by. As soon as the cook's phone rang, he was on his feet and walking around, always, _always_ lighting a cigarette when he answered.

After about a week with those two, Usopp was already becoming familiar with their routines. Well, he didn't know if he could call them routines, per se. They were more like habits.

Neither of them had any sort of sleeping schedule at all. Sometimes Usopp would find them both awake when he got up for work at five in the morning, sitting on the metal stools by the kitchen counter that formed a sort-of bar, creating the only real barrier between the designated space for the kitchen and the rest of the large room. They'd have beers in hand, and they would be delirious and full of laughter, the ash tray next to them chock full of crushed cigarette butts.

Even at five in the morning, when Usopp stood with them, drinking his first of many, many coffees of the day while they downed their booze before he had to run out the door, their laughter was infectious.

Sometimes he'd find them both passed out on the couches when he came home around nine in the evening. In either occurrence, they were always surrounded by plates that must've been covered in delicious food at one point, but Usopp could never guess what'd been on them, as there were only crumbs left. Luffy never let anything go to waste.

Luffy and Sanji were both a little unreal. They could command the attention of a room upon their arrival, and they could vanish just as quickly. Sanji worked long hours at some fancy restaurant that Usopp could probably never afford, and he rarely stayed still for too long. From what Usopp could tell, Sanji couldn't handle his hands being idle.

And Luffy… Luffy would sometimes leave for days and come back looking like he tripped and fell down a mountain.

And he always came back with a fat load of cash, usually shoved in his pockets—a stack so fat that it didn't even fit in his wallet. Usopp had raised his eyebrows when Luffy had thrown open the door one day, trudged over to the kitchen counter, sat down on one of the stools, and pulled fistfuls of money from his pockets, smoothing the bills out on the countertop, slowly counting them. He was seemingly awful at math, judging by his speed and efficiency with the task.

"What the hell do you do for a living?" Usopp had asked, his legs hanging over the armrest of the love seat he was spread over.

Luffy had looked over his shoulder at him and smiled, his lip cracked right through the very center, still high contrast in bright red. "A lot of different things."

Maybe Usopp didn't want to know.

Luffy's lip still hadn't healed yet a couple days later when the three of them were sitting around in the mid-afternoon, drinking beers and playing music off Usopp's old laptop that he'd put on the coffee table. Usopp had made the mistake of informing Luffy that it was possible to modify his scooter to make it faster, and Luffy was way too enthusiastic over the idea, and Usopp hadn't planned on signing himself up for anything, what the hell, and Sanji was laughing at his misfortune as he lit a new cigarette from his regular spot on one of the barstools when there was a loud knock at the door.

Well, it wasn't really a knock. It was more of a pounding. More like someone was kicking the door. The three of them stopped talking and looked towards the front of the room at the big wooden door.

"Usopp, you answer it," Luffy said, sitting on the counter, swinging his dangling legs a little.

"Why? You answer it!" Usopp protested from the couch.

"You're closer! Also, you're the newest, so you have to."

Sanji snorted as he listened to Luffy's reasoning, his hair hanging over his face as he looked down at his phone, his cigarette still burning in the ash tray, momentarily abandoned as he typed a message to an unknown receiver.

"Why wouldn't you wanna open the door?" Luffy asked, sitting back. "It could be anyone. None of us knows who it is! Maybe it'll be a gameshow host and they'll hand you a million dollars."

The heavy knocking that rattled the entire door continued, growing ever louder. Usopp ignored Luffy, not even bothering with a response, and he stood and walked to the door and wished there was a peephole. He took a deep breath, hoped for a million dollars, and opened the door.

As soon as the door was open, a large sapling potted in a bright teal ceramic pot was thrust into his arms.

"Jesus, about time! Did you trip and fall five times on your way to the door?—Here, take this."

He almost dropped it, totally unprepared. His vision was flooded with green and orange.

"Hey! You _shithead_, you were supposed to help me move today! Where the hell were you!" A heated redhead stepped around him and into their living room, and she stood next to Usopp in the open doorway, and he shifted his weight, suddenly holding what looked like a small orange tree.

Luffy's eyes widened as he saw her. "Oh, shit! Was that today?"

Usopp watched her hands curl into fists.

"Yes! You stupid idiot! I called you and your phone wasn't even turned on! You told me you had a 'friend' with a car that could help me move, and I had to convince some _random guy_ to drive me! Do you know how dangerous that is these days? I had to get a ride with a fucking stranger, who, by the way, you owe some gas money to."

Usopp looked over his shoulder, back out at the porch. It looked like she'd shoved her entire wardrobe into giant trash bags. There were… a lot of trash bags. He looked back at her. Her hair was so long—longer than his, even. And it was so orange. The same color as the little fruits on the tree he was holding.

Usopp realized he was probably the friend with the car Luffy had told her about.

He could hear Luffy's voice rising a little. "I lost my phone, I'm sorry! I thought today was Thursday! Here, here, I have, like, uh, twenty bucks, will that cover it? The gas, I mean?"

She snatched the twenty dollar bill from his hand almost before he could offer it to her, and she folded it and put it in the back pocket of her jeans and crossed her arms over her chest. "I'll make sure he gets it. I don't know how the hell you went this long thinking it was Thursday. Are you always this lost?"

Usopp shifted his weight again and tried to roll his shoulders a little. That tree was heavy. Why the hell was he still holding it? He walked over to the couch and gently placed it on the floor by the coffee table.

Sanji slapped his phone down on the counter and grabbed his cigarette, jumping out of his seat.

"Uh—let me help you with all these boxes—you're moving in here? Ignore the dumbfuck, you'll love it here," Sanji grinned at her, slipping past her to grab half her bags, and he glared at Luffy as he balanced several boxes and bags in both arms, his cigarette at home between his lips. "Help her carry her shit in, asshole."

Usopp looked over at her, and she caught his eye as she leaned against the couch's armrest, clearly not intending to do too much work in the very immediate future.

"Who're you?" he asked.

"Oh, sorry. My name's Nami. That idiot over there—" she nodded towards Luffy, who was piling several trash bags in his arms, "— convinced me to move in here, I don't know how, but he did, so here I am."

Usopp smiled at her. "No, that makes a lot of sense, actually."

She returned his expression. "Nice to meet you."

"You too."

Usopp, Luffy, and Sanji all helped her move her belongings upstairs, and she picked the room across from Usopp's because it had a south-facing window for her tree, which Sanji was able to identify as a calamondin, which impressed Nami, which was about the point that Sanji fell completely in love probably, by the look of it.

The dynamic changed a bit.

Nami fit in like she'd been there forever. She was rational and wild all at the same time. She was a splash of color, as bright and saturated as Sanji and Luffy. She always smelled good, always looked good, it was a little unnerving, and when she laughed, Sanji melted.

Sanji's admiration was entertaining and exasperating.

Nami had been sitting on the other end of the couch he'd sank into when Sanji walked by, sipping something that looked fruity and fucking tasty, and he had an extra drink in his hand, which he held out to Nami, raising his eyebrows with a smile, and she took it with a grin and tried it and threw her head back.

"So good."

Usopp had never seen Sanji look so pleased with himself.

"Where's mine?" he asked, only joking, not really caring.

Sanji narrowed his eyes at him, and Usopp was a little intimidated, yeah, maybe, but then Sanji nodded towards the countertop. "I'm not bringing yours to you, you can kiss my ass."

Usopp turned his head and looked and sure enough, there was another drink up there with a green straw in it and he almost laughed. What the hell.

Sanji went back to the kitchen to start on lunch and Usopp glanced over at Nami.

She winked at him. "You're welcome."

"Oh, whatever, maybe he's covering up his love for me by throwing himself at you," Usopp countered quietly, ducking down a bit, obviously not wanting Sanji to hear him over in the kitchen.

"I bet you're right," she said, nodding, sipping her drink, her shirt slipping a little further off her shoulder, nearly halfway down her arm, and her bra was apparently pretty lacy.

"You're kind of a heartbreaker," he told her, grinning.

She laughed a little and looked over the back cushion at Sanji, walking in circles around the kitchen, juggling several tasks at once. He was stuck in his own world. He probably wouldn't have heard them if they were yelling at this point.

"You think so?" Nami asked from behind her drink, still smiling.

Out of all of them, it was Nami that Usopp had the easiest time talking to.

* * *

Most of the faculty was still hovering in the hallway as Robin strode into the auditorium, taking a seat several rows in, slightly to the right of the podium. Her seemingly random choice of seating was actually quite intentional, however; from these seats, she had a sweeping view of everyone who entered the auditorium.

Robin's halcyon composure gave her the appearance of disinterest, but on the contrary, she was quite amused as she observed everyone unhurriedly streaming into the moderately sized auditorium, gradually filling the seats. The diversion of watching people was a pastime she had always thoroughly enjoyed.

Most of her colleagues were bleary-eyed and yawning, clutching onto large cups and thermoses of coffee for dear life. Perhaps it was a little masochistic for the university to arrange a faculty meeting at seven in the morning a week before classes started, but to see so many adults in one place who couldn't quite get their minds churning this early in the morning was honestly quite funny.

It didn't make them bad or irresponsible people—but it did appeal to her sense of humor.

Robin inwardly smiled as she heard a man's loud, booming laughter ring out above the tired murmurs and general din of the room. Although the two of them had never spoken directly, she instantly recognized to whom it belonged. In fact, Robin was certain anyone who had been in the same room as Cutty Flam for more than five minutes would probably be able to pick his unmistakeable laugh out of a crowd.

Her gaze swept across the room, searching for the source of the jovial laughter. It didn't take her long to spot the blue-haired man; he was impossible to miss, towering almost a head above nearly everyone else.

Unlike the majority of the faculty filling the auditorium, he was lively and cheerful. Grinning energetically, he greeted a few other professors Robin knew were affiliated with the engineering department. She noted that they were all guarded in their replies, their reservedness all the more apparent when compared to his vivacity.

But, regretfully, their behavior was wholly unsurprising. Genius was sometimes regarded with admiration. More often, however, people seemed to fear it as though it were some kind of contagious disease. Then again, it was human nature to fear what it didn't understand.

Her eyes lingered on the tall man a few moments longer, until a blonde woman wearing a rather short skirt and tall high heels approached Robin, greeting her with a disdainful glare. This woman was Califa, a professor in the business department.

Robin nodded at her politely, the corners of her mouth slightly upturned.

Califa scowled as she sat down next to Robin, crossing her legs as she irritably pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "I can't believe all of these teachers, avoiding sitting in the first couple rows. They're even worse than the students."

Robin glanced back over her shoulder, noticing all of the seats were already filled. "You're right. It seems this is the furthest you can sit from the front now."

"Why do you think I'm sitting here?" Califa asked, not bothering to hide her open hostility.

Robin was unfazed; she was used to Califa's antagonistic nature. She did find it rather funny that the stormy blonde was chastising everyone else for sitting in the back first when she was trying to do the same thing, but she would keep the contradiction to herself.

"These meetings are always such a waste of time."

"Why do you say that?"

Professor Califa raised an eyebrow. "What could an all-faculty meeting possibly accomplish? My department has nothing to do your... history department," she said, pronouncing the words with open disdain.

"That's true, but we're all a part of the same university. It's likely more efficient for them to go over the things that affect all of us," Robin pointed out.

"Of course I had to sit next to the only person in this room who isn't upset about being here," she huffed, crossing her arms. "If they want to discuss new policies and budgets, they should just send us a memo."

Robin smiled faintly at her colleague's unabashed unpleasantness. They were on speaking terms only because history tended to fill in anywhere that had open classrooms, whether it was the business and technology center, the arts and music hall, or even the science and engineering building at the edge of campus—where, interestingly enough, Robin would be teaching one of her classes this semester.

A loud hum resounded across the large space, accompanied by a rickety screen descending from above the stage. A moment later, a projector flickered on, displaying an overly-stylized PowerPoint presentation with a basic outline of the meeting agenda.

A woman in her mid-sixties—Tsuru, the assistant dean—approached the podium and announced that the meeting was about to start. As she launched into a lengthy speech that was probably supposed to inspire motivation, Robin discreetly shifted her gaze to some of her co-workers, who all seemed to be fighting a losing battle with drowsiness.

The first topic was about the financial state of affairs. All of their budgets would be severely reduced—never a tremendous surprise, it seemed to happen every year.

The next topic was about the faculty being required to maintain a more professional appearance. Tsuru explained that too many teachers had been showing up in overly casual clothes, and they felt it was damaging to the appearance of the school. How funny that they were worried about such a thing.

Then, teachers who had been tenured were announced, accompanied by tawdry PowerPoint slides with photographs of the smiling professors taken in ill-lighting. New teachers were welcomed. Other staffing changes were discussed.

Califa was completely correct when she said this all could have been done in a memo.

"The last matter I'd like to discuss is the textbooks you've been selecting for your courses. As you should recall, at our last few meetings, I've talked to you about the textbooks published by Toey."

Califa snorted quietly. "That old woman is still trying to badger us about this?" she muttered under her breath, just loudly enough for Robin to hear her.

"Toey has been gracious enough to approach several of our professors to co-author upcoming editions in a wide variety of subjects," Tsuru continued. "To show our appreciation, Dean Garp, the executive committee and I strongly encourage you to consider switching to one of their books next semester, if you haven't already made the switch."

Robin's eyes narrowed slightly. Califa let out another breathy hum of disapproval.

"I get it if you want us to use books one of the teachers here helped write," a loud voice called out, rising about the crowd, "but even if there are a couple of good ones, Toey has a lot of really awful stuff."

Once again, Robin recognized Cutty Flam's voice as soon as he began to speak. She glanced over in the direction where she knew he had sat, inwardly smiling as she saw him rise to his feet. His tie had already been loosened, the knot resting somewhere near his sternum, with his top two buttons undone.

"The new biochemistry books have things that were proven wrong in the eighties," Professor Flam continued. "Their computer engineering books ignore most operating systems. All of their upper level math books I've looked at are so confusing, I can barely follow the examples—and I'm already super good at solving the problems! And as for their robotics engineering books... They read like they were written for middle schoolers. They only discuss the most basic principles and beginner's applications, even in their so-called 'advanced' edition. It'd bore the students to death if we taught out of that book."

Tsuru frowned, the lines around her mouth deepening. "I'm not exactly sure why you're checking out books that aren't even topics you teach, Professor..."

"Toey's textbooks are super expensive as well!" he continued. "Some of the brand new editions cost twice as much as what the more popular publishers charge."

"Once the books have been in circulation a semester or two, the students can purchase used copies. Not to mention they can sell the books at the end of the semester."

"How is that good for the students? 'Oh, this book is five hundred dollars, but I can sell it for eighty at the end of the semester so it's okay.' There are already plenty of actual quality textbooks in circulation. There's just no reason for it."

The crowd was starting to murmur in annoyance. From the words and phrases Robin could pick out, the disapproval mostly seemed to be over Cutty Flam extending the length of the meeting, or over the professor himself—not actually words giving consideration for his argument.

"Well, Professor Flam—" Tsuru started.

"It's Fra—" he cut in.

"_Professor_. We are certainly not forcing you to use Toey's textbooks. However, since they are working with a number of our teachers, we wanted to return the favor."

"Favor? This isn't your neighbor watering your plants while you're out of town. They're running a _business_. If they're not supplying us with the best product, no one should buy it."

Califa made a small hum of irritation. "Even that idiot makes a good point there." She glanced over upon the absent response and almost sputtered aloud as Robin slowly rose to her feet and gently cleared her throat.

"Assistant Dean," Robin called out, her voice loud enough to be heard above the crowd while still remaining calm. "You must admit, such strong encouragement from the executive committee puts a lot of pressure on the professors."

Tsuru's frown deepened as her gaze shifted to Robin.

"We are not trying to pressure anyone into anything," Tsuru said flatly.

"I'm not trying to imply you are—but nevertheless, it does make everyone, particularly newer professors, feel compelled to consider Toey's books above the rest."

"It is not our intention to do so. You are all allowed to use whichever textbooks you wish, it is simply something we're mentioning."

"If that's the case, then the words you used—'strongly encourage,' I believe they were—are terribly misleading. Also, Professor Flam brings up a very valid point, about the inferiority of their publications." She turned her head in his direction. "In addition to the issues with the science texts he pointed out, there are glaring inconsistencies in many of the history texts. Some of them are complete anachronisms. Others simply have omissions of essential events."

She watched him as she continued to speak. His eyes were wide, mouth slightly agape, as he stared back at her. Then a wide, unfettered grin began to spread across his face.

Inexplicably pleased by the reaction, Robin turned back to the assistant dean.

"That is indeed concerning, if that's true," Tsuru replied with a forcibly steady tone, narrowing her eyes. "Thank you for bringing these items to my attention."

"But I didn't bring it to your attention," Robin replied coolly. "Professor Flam was the one who pointed it out."

Tsuru clenched her jaw, nodding her head politely. "Yes, you're correct. Thank you as well, Professor Flam."

Robin returned to her seat, noticing that Cutty Flam was staring at her once again, face plastered with a goofy grin. She unintentionally returned the smile; the silly look on his face was just too much.

* * *

Sanji sucked hard on his cigarette, giving it several long puffs, smoke hanging around his face, burning down the tobacco past the first little band of fire retardant.

Five or six years ago, he didn't have to tend to his cigarette like it was a fucking responsibility to keep it lit; there was no such thing as a 'fire safe cigarette.' Now, if he didn't keep track of his shit, his cigarette would simply go out. It would stop burning. Completely. Halfway through the damn thing. And it had to be relit, which, eugh, tasted awful. And it wasn't like the cigarettes themselves were actually 'fire safe.' They still caught things on fire. Like, for example, his entire ash tray in his bedroom back at Zeff's place a few years ago. Fortunately, he'd walked into his room in time to see the whole ash tray basically aflame and he had slightly panicked and poured his iced tea on the smoldering pile of butts, and black ashy sludgy iced tea goop had gotten all over his bed and the floor, but. The apartment hadn't burnt down. So.

Fuck, where the fuck was the bus?

Sanji pinched his cigarette between two fingers and pulled it away from his mouth. There was virtually no breeze, other than the occasional gusts of air from the cars speeding by the bus stop where he was still fucking waiting.

Did he miss the goddamn bus?

The sun was really beating down. He wiped sweat forming at his hairline away with the back of his hand. Several cars along the road started honking urgently at an old beat up Pontiac that wasn't moving forward at the green light.

He pulled out his phone and cupped his hand around the screen and squinted at it, trying to read the time beneath the glare.

Fuck, maybe he _was_ late.

He'd dicked around in the back of the kitchen after his shift was over—he didn't normally work day shifts, and he had ended up talking to a couple employees he didn't see very often, and, god damn it—

Did he really miss the bus?

Sanji's cigarette was finally reduced to its butt, and he dropped it and ground it into the concrete beneath his shoe and wiped a bead of sweat from the tip of his nose.

The cigarette hadn't even been enjoyable. Smoking in that balmy late-August air, with all that humidity—it was like being in an oven and breathing smoke and, ugh, it dried him out and made him so thirsty and god fucking _damn it_, he missed the bus, didn't he.

Sanji turned and looked up at the sign above the building he was standing in front of. It was a bar. And it was open. And it was really fucking hot outside, and his chef's uniform wasn't necessarily breezy.

It would be an hour before the bus showed up again.

Sanji strode into the dark, blessedly air conditioned establishment.

It was still only the middle of the afternoon so there weren't a lot of people inside. Not a big surprise.

He took a seat at the counter, his eyes scanning the line of beers on tap. Gross, really gross, maybe tolerable if he was desperate, gross, sick, and, yeah, so he was going with something bottled, then. He ordered a Belgian he'd never heard of before—but it was something other than a Budweiser, so that was a win—and let his eyes drift to the row of TV screens along the wall.

One screen was playing some kind of MLB season recap show, two were showing the same wrestling match, and the fourth was golf. Cool.

He didn't know what to do with his hands because he couldn't smoke, and he didn't have anywhere else to focus his eyes, so he watched the top twenty scenes from the last season of The Major League Baseball Show and sucked on his beer with his elbow on the countertop and his chin resting in the crook of his hand.

Someone walked up behind him and ordered a Sam Adams. In the middle of a sweltering afternoon? Gross.

Sanji caught a flash of short green hair in his periphery, and he turned his head just slightly, his lips still around the mouth of his Belgian. He looked the guy up and down while he waited for his drink.

He seemed… oh, wait, okay. This prick, he—

"Hey, I know you," Sanji said for some fucking reason as he pulled the bottle from his mouth—why the hell did he just initiate conversation with this asshole? What—what was wrong with him today? He cleared his throat a little and shifted his gaze away from…

Fuck, what was this guy's name? It was something… really fucking ridiculous… Z… Oh—hah—that was it—his name was _Zoro_.

"Do you?" Zoro asked finally, a crease forming in his brow as he stared Sanji down. The bartender set his pint glass down on the countertop with a loud _thud_.

"Yeah, uh, we had a couple classes together last year, didn't we?" Did this dumbshit not recognize him at all?

"Hell if I know." Zoro took a long swig from his glass mug.

"You—okay, well, whatever, you and I have had multiple classes together," Sanji muttered.

"Good to know."

Sanji shifted his position in the bar stool, rubbing his mouth and unclenching his jaw, his legs suddenly feeling restless. His fingers tightened around the sweating bottle of beer.

For some reason, Zoro hovered next to him for a moment, his eyes fixed on a recap of a failed base-stealing attempt.

Cool, be fucking awkward.

"Are you, uh, here with people?" Sanji asked.

Why the fuck, okay, was he _i__nterviewing_ him now? Sanji occupied his stupid idiot mouth with his beer, which was almost gone already somehow.

"Nah."

"Waiting for people?"

Was he _still fucking talking_ to this idiot?

Zoro shook his head from side to side. "How about you?"

"Nope," Sanji replied, forcing his gaze to lock onto one of the TV screens again. Golf. Golf would get him out of this. If Sanji would just shut up and disengage and focus on golf, Zoro would probably leave soon enough.

Instead, Zoro fucking sat down by him, leaving one empty stool between them.

Awesome, great. Perfect. Golden.

Sanji remembered the classes they'd had together well enough, even if Zoro apparently didn't. They weren't the easiest of classes, but they were manageable. Zoro had been a thorn in his side, always asking the dumbest questions, slowing the class down, and, okay, Sanji didn't mind that Zoro asked questions, but couldn't he wait until after class to ask shit that could be solved with common sense? He was always late, and disruptive, and he fell asleep half the time and, fuck, how _annoying_—

"Why the hell are you sitting in a bar drinking when the sun is still out, anyway?" Zoro asked abrasively.

"Missed the bus," Sanji said, succinct as he could be. "And what're _you_ doing at a bar right now?"

"Long story," Zoro replied simply, raising the pint glass to his lips.

"Give me the short version, then."

"Freak sewage accident."

"What?"

"You said give you the short version."

"That's too short," Sanji barked, curling his toes in his shoes. Fuck this guy, figuratively and deeply.

"I couldn't live in my apartment anymore, so I'm staying with a couple friends that said I could sleep on their couch till I found something else."

"That's, uh... wow."

"I don't really like sitting around there all day. Don't want to get in the way when they're already doing me a favor. So here I am."

"That really fucking sucks," Sanji said helpfully.

Zoro shrugged. "Shit happens, I guess. It's just a bad time to try to find a place around here. Fall semester. Everybody's moving over."

"Very true." Sanji thought again about how the clouds had essentially parted and bathed him in glowing sunlight as the heavens bequeathed him with that boarding house. It was _right next_ to the school, even. He'd basically won the lottery of housing rentals.

There was even still that one open room upstairs. Someone else could potentially also strike gold. Someone like—

Nope. Hell no. Sanji, you're a huge fucking idiot, don't do anything fucking stupid—

"I even tried to see about moving into dorms," Zoro added. "As terrible as that'd be."

"Tried to?"

"Yeah. Apparently they're full, unless someone moves out. Maybe that's good, though. I really don't want to try that."

"Don't blame you. You had your own apartment before?"

"Nah, roommates." Zoro's eyes stayed glued to the TV as he spoke. "They found another place to live, though."

"Unfortunate."

He nodded. "And it's sort of hard to get an apartment on your own."

"Tell me about it." Sanji inhaled deeply, the cool, filtered air of the bar filling his lungs. A very, very familiar and faint prickle of craving flooded the back of his mind. A cigarette sounded incredibly good after the beer he was finishing, but, no, it'd hardly been twenty minutes, calm down. Sanji briefly daydreamed up a fantasy about indoor smoking in public establishments.

Sanji did actually pity Zoro just a tiny bit.

But he needed to keep his mouth shut. Zoro was annoying. He was stupid. Literally, he was a fucking idiot.

"Someone will be renting out a room I can afford eventually," Zoro shrugged.

"You know," Sanji started.

A voice in the back of his head started to scream at him, desperately trying to stop him.

"Hm?"

"Um."

Do not. Do _not_ fucking do it, Sanji, you stupid mother fucker.

Sanji rubbed his mouth and eyed his empty beer for a second or two, and he looked back up at Zoro, who was waiting for him to spit it out and, no, Sanji sure as all fucking hell was _not_ going to—

"There's an open room at my place."

Sanji, you stupid… you stupid fucking idiot.

"Is there?"

Sanji nodded and rubbed his eyes and his voice actually sounded pained, like someone was twisting his arm, as he responded, "Uh-huh."

"Is it expensive?" Zoro asked, obviously and mother fucking unfortunately interested.

"Nope," Sanji said, pithy, folding his hands on the bar, and he felt like he was slowly shoving his own face into a brick wall, just totally fucking smashing it. "Cheap as hell. Right by the school."

"You may have just fucking saved me. What was your name?" Zoro asked, and Sanji rubbed his face.

He'd lost his mind. He'd just had some kind of seizure. He'd just blacked out and lost all control of himself. Possibly his entire life.

"Sanji."

"Sanji. Okay. Um, can I, uh… come see it, or, uh…" Zoro said slowly, and Sanji's face was still mashed into his palms.

"Sure. We can take the bus when it gets here in half an hour," he said, his voice muffled.

"Uh. Great."

Sanji took a long breath and pushed his hair away from his face, clenching his fingers around it, his elbows pressed hard into the bar under his weight. Fuck.

"Yep."

Damn it.

He'd fucked up.

* * *

**A/N: first of all, holy cRAP thank you so much for reading. thank you. forever. if you review, thanks even HARDER. your feedback is our life force. sweet nectar. ambrosia from olympus. okay anyway alright**

**for real thank you. we have put a lot of work into this project and we're so excited to start sharing it with you. this will be one of the shortest chapters in the entire work. everything is planned from start to finish, so no worries about us stopping like ever. if you stick with us to the end then you are a warrior and an angel and an incredible being, and we hope you enjoy the ride**

**and oh side note, if you didn't know, each chapter will come with an illustration, and you can find links to the art on our profile page.**

**THANK YOU x 100000 we'll see you at chapter two! **

**- liz and raquel**

**ps we know it's toei and not toey okay we did it ON PURPOSE ALRIGHT alright.**


	2. September

**Chapter 2: September**

* * *

Heavily-lashed eyes snapped open at the sound of... a crash? What was that? His eyes lingered on the ceiling for a few seconds before he sat upright.

It was early, still really dark, and he glanced over at his clock to check the time—and, oh, he figured out the source of the noise. There was his alarm clock, reduced to a smashed pile of shattered plastic and uncoiling wires on the floor.

He pushed loose strands of blue hair back, frowning at the obliterated appliance. It'd been awhile since he did that—probably the last time he'd actually _needed_ the alarm to wake himself up. He usually didn't have a problem getting up, no matter how little sleep he'd gotten the night before.

Throwing tangled sheets off of his lap, wearing nothing but a pair of briefs, he swung long, hairy legs over the side of the bed, connecting calloused soles with aging carpeting. Pausing to scratch his equally hairy chest, he realized his shoulders were kind of stiff.

Rising to his feet, he reached large hands upward, stretching out his spine and shoulders; if he stood on the balls of his feet, he could just barely touch his ceiling. It was kind of weird how his muscles felt so knotted; he'd taken it pretty easy the last two weeks. Really, other than going out a couple of times for errands—and one meeting—he'd spent all of his time working on his model project for the next semester.

His eyes drifted immediately to the table in the corner of his small bedroom, and a grin spread across his face. A bit eagerly, he picked up the small, slick-looking metal-and-plastic contraption he'd nearly finished the night before.

... His contraption that he'd been hunched over, tinkering with and programming, for probably twelve or sixteen hours a day for the last two weeks.

Oh. Yeah, _that_ might be why his shoulders were stiff.

Well, hey, he wasn't as young as he used to be. Mid-thirties, huh, how that'd happen. He sure didn't feel that old. He sat down at the single chair in front of the table, admiring his creation.

He'd designed it look to like a lion. Well, sort of—it was purposely a little cartoony, and it was small, maybe the size of a beagle. Oh, like the size of a lion cub, that was good, although it had a plastic fringe to represent a mane so it wasn't really supposed to be a cub. But, aesthetics aside—not that he put aesthetics aside, because it was _very_ important it looked _really_ cool—but it was the guts that mattered.

Its purpose was to use as a teaching model—and hopefully, to inspire his students. It had a huge variety of functions and processes. Voice-control, audio and video recording capabilities, fully functioning limbs, the ability to shoot small projectiles, and superior command processing abilities.

In fact, that was one of the features he was most excited about—he'd spent a ton of time programming it to be able to make the small robot recognize and process certain commands that weren't pre-programmed, to a certain extent. He felt strongly like the next frontier to cover was AI.

To make something that could take data it'd previously taken in and process a new command from it—it was really, really thrilling. To learn from_ process of deduction?_ Only a few creatures on the planet were capable of that!

He'd keep tweaking the little lion bot through the year, but at least it was enough to show off to the class soon. He wasn't even sure how well it'd work, but it was already able to combine certain commands. Who knew what it might learn.

He'd called it the _Lion Gang Champion_. He thought it was a super cool name.

What a great accomplishment for the break. He'd heard some of the other professors talk about family vacations and house projects and couples getaways—but look at what he was able to do! He couldn't wait to share it with his new group of students.

Realizing he should probably start getting ready, he made his way to the bathroom, grabbing a bottle of shaving cream. He stared at his reflection as he shook the bottle and squeezed some out into his hand. Yeah, there were maybe some lines around his eyes, around his mouth—but he still looked pretty good, he had to say. Slathering the white foam across his face, he started shaving; his facial hair would always stand the test of time. He put a lot of work into it. Immaculate precision with every stroke, tracing along the lines of his carefully sculpted goatee.

When he was nearly done, he cranked on the hot water for a shower.

The room was filling up with steam by the time he kicked off his briefs and dipped his head under the bar and stepped into the shower.

His shower curtain was a map of the world with every country labeled. He had it completely memorized.

His brain tended to map things out on its own, assigning values and places to each piece of information, and sometimes he couldn't help but think of things as schematics. Like his world map shower curtain—on top of knowing exactly where each country was, he also knew that country's GDP and standing point in the global economic scale of things, and he mentally catalogued each country's largest trade export—its contribution to the world market.

Name, place, importance, function.

Not to mention its changes—everything was constantly being updated and reorganized. Technology and countries alike.

Couldn't keep shampoo out of his eyes to save his life, though.

With his face directly under the shower head, leaned over with his palms pressed flat against the walls, he thought about his alarm clock that he'd broken. Again.

See, he used to go through those damn clocks at a rate that one might classify as... _alarming? _

He broke out laughing as he rinsed the last of the shampoo from his hair and his eyeballs.

But back to the clocks themselves—despite being super conducive for bad puns, the fact remained that it wasn't exactly frugal to be purchasing ten or twelve a year. This was a _problem_ and he was an engineer, after all, and an inventor, and an all-around super-problem-solving genius and he could do what he did best and come up with a _solution_.

Scrubbing his body, he mentally calculated (judged) the amount of force exerted on the snooze button of his digital alarm clock and how to apply an appropriate level of resistive force to counteract the impact.

Some kind of platform with something for shock absorption (like a padded piece of wood with springs) would probably work. But, wait.

He reworked the calculations in his head as he rinsed away the soap. There were certain vulnerabilities in particular portions of the plastic—they weren't exactly made to withstand a turbulent force—so maybe it'd help if he reinforced the clock itself in addition to the snooze shield. Which would be easy to do, now that it was already in several pieces. Maybe he'd paint it. That would also be cool.

When he stepped out of the shower, a towel around his waist, he padded through his empty apartment and hung around the kitchen, debating on breakfast but ultimately deciding to grab a coke for now. Never much cared for coffee. He pulled two of the red and white cans out of the fridge—four or five fridge packs and some loose cans in the door were about all that was in there—and started to get dressed.

His apartment was a compilation of storage space and fold-out surfaces, because sometimes he needed ten or twelve table tops, and other times he just needed a normal, functional living room and bedroom. Something stylish and functional, something that he could be proud of.

He'd custom-built almost all of his furniture—because really, beneath a couch was a perfect space for storage drawers, and a coffee table should have a top that folds out and expands in case a bigger surface was needed, and there was no reason a cabinet shouldn't extend right up to a ceiling to take advantage of the space. And hey, when he made it himself, he could give it some pretty awesome embellishments.

Returning to his bedroom, he rummaged in some of the drawers that contained actual for-real clothes, not just wires and parts, and tossed a pair of briefs, socks and trousers—yes, _trousers_—onto his bed before he dove into his closet for a shirt.

The dress code was really getting out of hand.

His shirts all had to have collars now? And _button_ up the front? And all the buttons actually had to be _buttoned_, all the way up to his _neck?_

He was required to _wear ties to meetings? _

Like that had anything to do with learning.

Taking one last glance at the kitchen, he officially made the decision to grab something on the way to work instead of trying to throw together a breakfast here. He snatched up the coke he'd laid out by the door earlier, gave one last wistful look at the Lion Gang Champion—okay, no, he had to make a few adjustments before he brought it in, he'd leave it at home—and went on his way.

The sky was a hazy blue-gray while he sat in his car in the parking lot, wolfing down three breakfast sandwiches and two hash browns. The sun wasn't up just yet. It was so quiet at this time of day.

For twenty plus minutes, he sat alone in his car, in the empty parking lot, waiting for the janitor to unlock the doors to the science and engineering building. When his coke was gone, he reached into the back, digging into the half-empty pack he knew was behind the passenger seat. It was still a little cold, but it'd get pretty hot in the car now that the sun was out. He'd take the box in with him. They'd probably be gone by the time he went home.

Snapping open the fresh can, he turned up the volume on his car speakers.

When he saw the man in the green jumpsuit unlocking the front doors, he turned his car off and grabbed his bag stuffed with papers and folders—he'd meant to organize that thing before the school year started, super serious—and he lugged it over his shoulder and headed inside, the heels of the loafers he fucking hated dragging along the parking lot asphalt.

The halls were empty and he hardly lingered. He passed the Department Head office and the staff room, pausing for the briefest moment to glance inside, noting they'd added a new orange sofa in there. Er, wait. Huh. Maybe it wasn't new. Hm.

He continued walking and finally made it to his classroom. _His _classroom. His super kickass best-one-in-the-whole-university classroom.

All around the outside walls, on top of the counters that lined the room, and some even hanging from the ceiling, bizarre-looking gadgets and toys and devices all sat on display—creations from his past students. Some of them weren't necessarily useful in daily activities, but they were all, without a doubt, _super _cool.

Like the TV-B-Gone, an invention made by a student of his three years ago. It emitted 209 different turn-off codes for nearly every television. It was a little gray button on a keychain. It looked like a garage-door opener and it could turn off every television in a crowded bar. So awesome.

Or the Blow Bot, made by a student five years back. He had gently tried to encourage his student, who was very intelligent, obviously, to use a different name for her creation, but she'd been a fan of the alliteration and couldn't understand why he wasn't into it.

The Blow Bot was an inflatable robot. It was capable of simple commands, controlled by radio, with built-in walkie-talkie capabilities. The material used made it potentially extremely affordable and marketable. He did not discuss marketing with her any further. He was proud of her invention. Extending robotics beyond the reach of the wealthy and financially stable. He was extremely proud.

Last year, a student of his had created a flying alarm clock. As in, someone would actually have to get up out of bed and catch it to turn it off. He'd looked upon it in horror and given his student a super grade. Of course! After all, he couldn't let his own personal biases interfere in the classroom. It was a great invention, and a great use of robotic technology, despite being a nightmare-come-to-life.

And today was the start of another semester. New classes, new faces, new young people who wanted to learn cool stuff about science and mechanics and engineering and—

He grinned as the first of his new students started filing in, yawning loudly, probably inwardly questioning whatever possessed them to take such an early class. He stood up against the side wall towards the back of the class, out of the way, and he waited until it seemed like everyone was in attendance and glancing around the room.

He crossed his arms over his chest and walked slowly to the front of the classroom, and he watched over twenty sets of tired eyes focus on him and realize that they were staring directly at their professor, and wondering how the hell they'd missed a man that was well over six feet tall with blue hair that made up several inches of his overall height.

Ah, the kids were always super hilarious in his early class.

"Good morning!" he said loudly, and nearly everyone flinched at the sound of his rough, scratchy voice booming out towards them. Nobody responded. Off to a good start.

"I'm going to skip over the whole course outline and syllabus deal, because you can read that on your own time, and you'll all get to know each other over the semester so we're not doing introductions. Take out your notebooks and pay attention, you're going to want to write a lot of this down. Unless you have some kind of super eidetic memory. But, then, well, there aren't any true, proven cases of anyone really having a photographic memory. So really, if you think about it, you're probably just being lazy. In which case you won't do well in this class."

He had begun scribbling across the whiteboard as he spoke, and when he glanced over his shoulder, he saw most of his students still fumbling to find a pen or the right notebook.

"Most of my lectures will be available for download in PDF format from the school website," he said, turning. "So, just write down what you think is the most important stuff. But, well, it's all important, so that's up to you. I guess, if I'm taking the time to actually write it down, you probably should, too."

His students were rubbing their eyes and stifling their yawns and trying to see past him in order to copy what he'd scribbled down.

_**τ **_= _**H**_(_**q**_)_**q**_¨ + _**c**_(_**q**_, _**q**_˙, _**f**__ext_)

He stepped aside and nodded to the board. "That's the equation of motion for a robot mechanism. It can be written a few ways, but who cares, this'll work for now."

He smiled a little at the frowns in his students' faces, at the mere fact that they were writing equations already, five minutes into their earliest class on their first day.

"Uh…"

His eyes drifted to a student in the back who was raising his hand a little. He nodded at him.

"Professor Fla—"

"Hey!" he shouted, interrupting his student, dropping his smile and pointing directly at him.

The boy froze. As did the rest of his class.

"Let's get one thing straight. I know it's super early in the morning, and you'll all probably forget most of what I'm telling you today, which is fair, it's day number one and it's basically the crack of dawn for you, I get that. But if you remember anything, make sure it's this, because I'm not repeating myself a hundred times—"

His entire class had straightened a little in their seats. He grinned openly at them.

"Forget all the other labels. My name is _Franky._"

* * *

There was a singular force entirely responsible for removing Usopp from his bed on mornings he didn't have to work at the coffee shop at the crack of dawn, succeeding where intensely blinding sunlight, all daily responsibilities, and the overwhelming need to piss had all failed.

He could be in a straight coma and the smell of Sanji's cooking would wake him up.

Inhaling deeply, using the beckoning scent of a hot breakfast prepared by probably the best fucking chef in the entire country as motivation, Usopp groaned loudly to his empty room and rolled out of bed, and he could feel his hair all over the place when he stood up straight, he didn't even need to look in a mirror to know he was a few picks away from some kind of half-afro monstrosity, and he pulled/man-handled it back into a very curly ponytail after yanking on some sweatpants he'd spotted on the floor—he smelled them and they were definitely still clean, alright—and he slightly-stumbled down the stairs to the bottom level of the house.

Almost all his roommates were there and awake, which was odd for daylight hours. Luffy was missing, but that wasn't that strange.

Sanji was cooking even more—he'd actually already put out a sort of buffet line of breakfast foods along the stretching kitchen countertop that they'd all essentially started using as a bar. Everything looked like the airbrushed food featured in photographs on restaurant menus. Except fancier. Everything was pristine. Usopp already knew it was going to taste good, and it smelled incredible, but aesthetically, Sanji's cooking was like… His desserts were like supermodel-level compared to regular desserts. They were the high fashion models of the pastry world. Legitimately pretty to look at. Sometimes Usopp almost wanted to take a picture of his meal before he ate it, but that'd be weird, wouldn't it? Would that be weird?

He piled his plate full of breakfast delicacies, and he didn't know why Sanji was still cooking, Jesus, but sometimes Usopp thought maybe Sanji cooked just because he could. Because that's who he was. Even after only a month, it was so painfully obvious that Sanji was easily enamored with many people and things, but he'd always return to his first love. And it was enjoyable to watch someone Sanji's age being so fully engaged in something that was clearly his passion and freaking forte. Usopp couldn't imagine what it was like to be so damn self-actualized.

Either way, it didn't matter how much food Sanji made in the end. In a house of five hungry, financially-unstable adults, everything got eaten eventually.

"Is Luffy gone?" Usopp asked as he slid into a seat across from Nami at the very large and very scuffed cherrywood dining table near the peeling wall. None of the chairs were the same. He'd sat in all six of them and there were two that were respectably close to being actually comfortable.

"Yeah, he's been gone since yesterday, maybe?" Nami said, dipping one of her little dessert donut-looking things in her coffee and taking a small bite. Usopp did not have the level of self control Nami possessed, and he used his fork as a shovel.

"How do you guys all know him?" Zoro asked from the couch where he was sitting with a textbook in his lap.

Sanji glanced at Nami and Usopp from the kitchen, and the three of them looked back at Zoro, unanimously pausing as a collective.

"I met him in the parking lot at the school where he was attempting to reverse-engineer his scooter in the space next to my car."

"He came into my work and ordered over two-hundred dollars worth of food with forty bucks to his name because he thought the prices on the menu were portion sizes."

"Someone tried to steal my laptop bag during a class—literally took it off my desk—and Luffy grabbed it for me before I knew it was gone."

"He seems like a pretty interesting guy," Zoro said, raising his eyebrows a little at their stories.

"He's…" Sanji began, adding a few extra plates to the buffet line, and Usopp was going to have to go throw up or something because whatever Sanji had just finished looked and smelled incredible and Usopp needed, like, way more room in his stomach. Sanji tapped his chin and looked over at Zoro on the couch, who was watching him from behind the cushion. "He's a total shithead, but he brought us all here, so we can't hate him."

Sanji smiled a little and Usopp could see Zoro going back to his text book with a dismissive, "Hm."

Usopp turned his eyes to Sanji almost automatically, and he hid his tiny grin behind his hand. Sanji scowled at the back of Zoro's head and lit a cigarette, leaning against the kitchen counter.

Those two did not get along, and Usopp didn't understand why Sanji had brought Zoro home with him a few evenings ago in the first place, but the more Usopp was present when they were in the same room, the more he was beginning to guess that Sanji didn't know either.

Apparently they knew each other from the previous year or something, but they certainly weren't friends. There were times when Usopp could see Sanji physically straining to not lose his shit on Zoro. And, entertaining enough, Zoro was, at times, equally frustrated at Sanji. And to be fair, Sanji was a total fucking prick to Zoro. To continue being fair, Zoro was perfectly capable of handing all of Sanji's shit back to him. Usopp wasn't exactly sure why the animosity between them existed, but he wasn't going to mess with it. He wasn't the house peacekeeper.

Nami caught him watching the exchange, and they matched subtle smiles, both of them leaning over the table to whisper something to each other, but just as Nami was cupping her hand over her mouth to add in some commentary to the scene, the door down the hall clicked open.

This shouldn't have been strange, because that's where Luffy's room was—he slept in the basement, and the door to the basement was at the end of the hall, so this was a very normal sound to hear, but. Luffy wasn't there. Nami and Usopp seemed to realize this at the same time, and they turned in their chairs to see a kid coming out of the extra room down the hall. Usopp had forgotten that room was even there.

The stranger had an outrageous cow-licked mop of chocolate-colored bed-head sticking up in a few different directions, and his cheeks and nose were littered with dark freckles, and he was stretching and yawning loudly with his eyes squeezed shut. He looked young. Like, teenager-young.

Halfway to the kitchen, standing in front of the stairs, he opened his eyes as he was scratching his chest through the faded t-shirt that he was practically drowning in, and he paused, his mouth still open in a ridiculous frozen yawn. He blinked a couple times and snapped his mouth closed as he looked slightly wide-eyed at the room full of people blatantly staring at him in pregnant silence.

"Oh. Um, hi, everyone," the kid said in a cracking voice.

"Hi?" Usopp said, and they were all at a slight loss.

"I, uh—" the kid rubbed his arm, looking around the giant room they were all spread out in.

"Who the hell are you?" Zoro asked from the couch in his low and rumbly voice and damn if that wasn't intimidating. Zoro was a little unintentionally abrasive sometimes. Just very slightly scary. Not scary. Well, a little scary, okay, yeah.

"I'm Chopper—I live here. I mean, I moved in. I've actually been here a couple days, but I have a weird schedule and, I don't know, I knew other people lived here, but I haven't seen you guys until... right now." He cleared his throat.

Chopper was floundering a little bit.

"How old are you?" Nami asked, resting her chin on her hand as she leaned on the tabletop.

"Seventeen—I graduated, uh, a little early, and I'm starting in the pre-med program at the school…" Chopper said, trailing off a bit, shifting a little as he continued, "Sorry, I just—it smelled really good out here, so I came out to see… I mean, Luffy told me one of you was a chef…?"

Chopper was hesitating under the thick silence of being stared at by four different sets of eyes. A few long seconds passed between them all.

"Sorry, I can—"

Chopper was interrupted by four different waves of questions all hitting him at once.

"You're in the premed program here? Isn't that, like, really fucking hard?"

"So you're, like, a doctor, then?"

"Oh, that's perfect, I can't afford to go to a doctor."

"Sabaody has a medical program?"

Chopper's dark brown eyes got wider, which was impressive, because they were already huge, and he held his hands up in defense, suddenly almost shouting at them, interrupting them all, "Wow, okay, I'm not a doctor, you idiots!"

The group paused and several more second crawled past them.

Chopper's face was getting extremely red, and Usopp could see the backpedalling in his facial features.

"Er. I mean." Chopper faltered a moment. "You're not idiots. I'm sorry. Uh, is Luffy here?"

"Nah, he's out. How do you know him?"

"I met him on campus, and he showed me around while I was touring the school. I don't even know what his major is, though."

Nami laughed. "He doesn't have a major. He's not even a student."

Sanji and Usopp both turned their heads towards Nami, and Chopper spoke for the three of them in a shrill voice, "What?"

Nami took another bite of her breakfast and Usopp's mind was reeling a little. If Luffy wasn't a student, what the hell was he doing hanging around the campus so much?

"He likes going to the classes," Nami said, poking at a section of some kind of cherry breakfast pastry. "He thinks they're interesting."

Usopp, along with Sanji and Chopper, who were clearly as uninformed as Usopp was, stared at her, utterly blank.

"His grandpa's the dean."

"That little shit," Sanji said, and he looked over at Chopper. "Anyway, welcome. Zoro's an asshole, but the rest of us aren't so bad."

"Fuck off," Zoro muttered, focusing on his book again.

Chopper cleared his throat and smiled a little.

"So, uh, can I—is it okay if I get breakfast, too?"

"Don't ask, just help yourself," Sanji said, taking another drag of his cigarette.

After loading up a plate that was filled with mostly pastries, Chopper started to head back down the hall, but he sort of stopped next to the table, like he wasn't really sure what he was supposed to do.

"So, what's your first class today?" Nami asked, clearly noticing his confusion.

A hint of relief washed over Chopper's freckled face as he turned toward the table, timidly taking the seat across from Nami.

"Um... Differential Calculus with Theory."

"Shit," Zoro muttered under his breath.

"Ah. That sounds kind of hard," she said.

"Yeah, it's the advanced one, too. I'm, um, in the honors program," Chopper added, a bit haltingly.

As much as Usopp wanted to hear about the apparent kid-genius living with them now, he really had to shower and figure out where the hell his first class was, which started in about—forty minutes? Yikes. He'd taken too much time at breakfast. No, that was okay, it was totally worth it and he only regretted he couldn't eat more.

Normally Usopp liked how big and sprawling the campus at Sabaody was, with the wide expanses of grass and paths adorned with benches, covering gentle, rolling hills—but at times like this, he sort of wished everything was closer to the parking lot. He made it to the building with seconds to spare, and he slid into a chair near the classroom doorway just as the ancient relic of a professor—Professor Haredas was his name—stood up and started his tremulous introduction to the class.

Feeling someone's gaze on him, Usopp scanned the room until he met a very familiar pair of brown eyes. Nami winked and stuck the tip of her tongue out at him before she turned back to the front of the room. Weird. Really? He was surprised they'd have a class together—what was her major again? Something weather-y. Meteorology... Longer than that, though. Oh yeah. Research meteorology.

Okay, maybe it _did_ make sense she'd need to take thermodynamics.

As they left, Nami approached him and hooked her fingers into the handle on the side of his backpack, rattling off her first impressions of the class as they walked down the hallway of the science and engineering building.

"There are actual homework assignments! Can you believe it?"

"Uh, what do you mean?" Usopp asked, a bit confused. Homework seemed like a pretty normal thing to have? Right?

She gave him an incredulous look. "Come on, when's the last time you had to do an assignment out of a _textbook_? It's usually all tests and papers, right? Maybe even short response essays. But chapter problems?"

"Oh. I guess I've had a couple of classes like that?"

"Really? Maybe I just lucked out. I mean, sure, math classes assign problems like that, I guess—but teachers don't grade your homework, you're just kind of screwed if you don't do it and learn how to solve the shit." She looked up at him, brushing a loose tendril of hair off of her forehead with her free hand. "But he's actually going to give us a _grade_ on them. I don't know, I'm in shock."

"Yeah. Ugh, stop talking about it, I'm not looking forward to it."

He slowed down as they approached one of the rooms near the end of the hall, by the rear exit.

"What?" she asked, tugging at his backpack.

He pointed at the doorway. "My next class is here."

"That's lucky, I don't know if I've ever had two classes so close to each other. Does it start soon?"

"Uh, like thirty minutes, I think?" Usopp flipped his phone out of his pocket, confirming the time. "Er, more like forty-five."

"Good, come with me to get coffee then," she said, pulling the backpack handle one more time. Really, Usopp had never even understood why the damn thing was on there before, but she seemed to be getting pretty good use out of it.

"Sure," he said, because what else could he say, and he let her half-lead him along toward the crappy little coffee-and-sandwich shop that was a short walk away. The coffee was terrible and Usopp fully anticipated drinking a lot of gross lattes from there over the semester. Because convenience was going on win over quality in this case.

Although, he suspected his next class may be enough to keep him him awake, even without a triple-shot of espresso.

At first, Usopp wasn't going to take robotics.

The engineering program was, well, _hard. _But it was interesting, and it let him learn about all the things he'd been into as a kid. He'd always liked to take things apart and put them back together, or try to build things or do little repairs here and there. Anything that let him get his hands on something and really _do _something with it.

As a teenager, his biggest hobby, other than drawing, might've been tinkering with his old station wagon, since long before he could actually legally drive the thing. Well, really, he was lucky he got to keep it at all—after his mom passed away when he was still a kid, his foster parents could've sold it, could've told him he couldn't hold onto it, even if he did find somewhere else to store it. But the deal was, if it wasn't rotting in their driveway, they didn't care. So, with the help of an—uh, old friend—he found somewhere to keep it and that meant he learned how to maintain a car before he could actually drive one. Being passed from one foster home to the next, eventually, his car kind of seeped through the documented cracks.

But, even before his mom's old boat-sized Mercury Grand Marquis Colony Park piece of crap wood-paneled station wagon became his only heirloom from her, he'd liked to work with his hands.

Anyway, long story short, when he started college, he had a choice to make. There was art, yes, he really did love to draw, but after he'd turned eighteen, he was on his own—he didn't have family to fall back on or any kind of security. So that meant he needed money. And he didn't think he'd turn out being good enough at art to buy a house with it one day, or even pay rent. And mechanical and electrical engineers usually started off with something like a sixty-thousand dollar salary. So.

He made sure he kept up enough on all of the complicated math and physics classes he had to take during his first two years so he could get to play around with building and fixing stuff, and hopefully get a job in that someday. It'd be nice to do something he sort of enjoyed for a living, right?

But robotics was one of those very niche electives that was _extremely hard _from what he'd heard, and he never thought he'd take it. There were plenty of other options, anyway.

Until he'd had Professor Franky for a class last spring.

His first impression of him was that the guy was totally over-the-top. When he started class, it was like he set off a round of fireworks, demanding the attention of anyone and everyone. His presence was larger than life—and with him being probably one of the tallest people Usopp had ever known, he meant it both figuratively and literally.

Day one of robotics, Professor Franky, as expected, had burst in like a whirlwind, speaking quickly and animatedly, laying down tons of formulas and information. Usopp had glanced around the room from his spot next to the window in one of the center rows and, okay, thank god, everyone else looked as visibly overwhelmed as he felt, so that was… good?

Franky had a way of uniting the classroom in odd ways. In most of Usopp's other classes, students kept their heads down, writing notes or scrolling their phones in their laps. But Franky had apparently devised a way of formulating genuine camaraderie.

His momentum carried them, and without it, Usopp doubted he would've been able to keep up. And it wasn't just that. Franky also encouraged students to work together to solve problems, to ask each other for help, and to collaborate.

Because, Franky had said, they were all working towards the same goal.

Franky had taken a week to review the basics with them, and at the end of that first week, he'd issued his first formal quiz. However, there was only one quiz—like, one physical piece of paper. The entire class was ordered to work together on it, hand it in together, and receive the same grade.

It'd been encouraging that they'd all started out with great grades. Like, maybe they could do this. At the beginning of week two, Franky started talking to them about their projects.

"We could probably spend the whole semester just talking about this stuff, but that'd be super boring, so we're going to build some robots."

It was an abrupt transition and Usopp very quickly wondered if he was in over his head.

Being in over his head was like his life-long reoccurring idiom, though, so he'd be fine. Probably.

* * *

Nami walked up to the front door, her hair pulled up in a high bun because it was damn hot outside, and she propped the big wooden door open and kicked her sandals off as she made a direct line over to the cushy love seat and threw herself down onto it.

"Why the hell did you leave the door open like that, were you raised in a barn—"

"Shh—just shut up. Shut up and wait twenty seconds," Nami said, interrupting Zoro before he could finish what he was saying because, frankly, what he was saying was pretty stupid in the first place.

Zoro glared at her from the couch, closing the book in his lap, his mouth opening to say something else, but whatever clever little remark he thought he was about to come up with was put on hold when Usopp and Sanji came in the front door, visibly covered in sweat, their shirts were totally soaked, and between them, they were barely managing a huge big screen television.

See, when Nami found out Usopp was an engineering student, she'd made a mental note in the back of her head. And a couple weeks later, when she'd heard about a girl giving away a really big and broken television, she knew just who to go to.

Nami pointed to the spot in front of the fire place, and Sanji and Usopp walked it over, both their backs a little bent, straining, and they lowered it to the ground as gently as they could manage, both of them straightening up slowly, breathing heavily. The TV was one of those gargantuan older models, maybe from the early 2000's or late 90's, and it was heavy—certainly nothing Nami would be breaking her back over.

"You guys got a TV?" Zoro asked, and Nami looked over at him, but before she could say anything, Sanji cut in, lighting a cigarette.

"No, it's a puppy. We talked and decided you were finally responsible enough for one."

Zoro narrowed his eyes at Sanji, gritting his teeth, but he chose to drop it and ask Nami instead, "How'd you get this thing?"

"Aw, you're not going to name it?" — Sanji was being ignored at this point.

"Some girl in my class mentioned it. It was free!" Nami grinned, feeling proud of herself.

"Free? Why the hell was it free?"

"Because it's broken," Usopp said, re-tying his ponytail up a bit higher to get all his curls off his neck. "She thinks I can fix it."

"Well, can you?" Zoro asked.

"Maybe. Probably not."

"Oh, yes you can," Nami said, propping her feet up on the coffee table. "It'll be easy."

"You don't know shit about televisions, and really, I don't either, and I don't know where you're getting this idea that I can just—"

"Usopp!" Nami said over him, pointing at him. "You are a smart and capable individual! Also, just google it, you'll figure it out."

Usopp faltered, trying his very hardest not to be flattered, but Nami figured he was probably failing, because he sat down next to the television, right on the hardwood floor, and he pulled out his phone and was probably already googling how to fix old tube TVs.

"And besides," Nami grinned, and Usopp looked up at her, "Sanji's gonna make us drinks, so it'll be fun anyway."

"He is?" Usopp asked, glancing over at Sanji, who was sitting on one of the metal stools at the bar, ash tray next to him, looking up from his phone at hearing the sound of his name.

Sanji's eyes went from Usopp to Nami, and he processed the conversation he'd only been half-listening to, and with his open, toothy smile, he said to Nami rather than Usopp, "Absolutely."

Sanji made them all drinks and served them in mismatched glasses and cups, even Zoro got one, and they were fruity as hell, he actually put pineapple in it—he cut up a whole pineapple up and put it in their drinks, for god's sake—and Nami finished hers quicker than she meant to and Sanji, bless him, already had another ready to go by the time she was sucking up the last few drops through her bright green straw.

Nami was the only one that got a straw, but nobody else complained.

Usopp and Sanji and Nami all took turns showering in between reading up on how older televisions worked and cutting up more fruit to soak in coconut rum—Sanji had good ideas when he was bored—and lounging around in the cushy love seat. Nami drank her second round in the shower.

Usopp had made some comment about her heading upstairs with a cup in her hand, and she told him not to knock it until he tried it.

Drinking in the shower was _extremely enjoyable._

When she came back downstairs, Usopp had a big box of tools sitting in front of the television, and he was wedged behind it, the whole back panel removed, and he was pulling a big circuit board out of the TV when she walked up, her hair still wet, to inspect his progress. He looked up at her and held up the circuit board.

"The joints on the heat sink just need to be re-soldered and that should fix it," Usopp informed her, like she knew what the hell that meant.

"Great job," she said, patting him on the shoulder, and she sat back down next to Zoro and leaned over a bit to see what he was studying and yeah, nope, she was already sleepy after reading one paragraph, and Zoro gave her a look that clearly said _I hate this shit way more than you ever could_. She left him to his boring homework and chose to sprawl across the other couch instead.

After about fifteen minutes of near-silence as Zoro studied and Nami and Sanji listlessly scrolled through their phones, all of them slowly drinking their summery drinks, they all nearly jumped when Usopp suddenly shouted, "Done!"

He re-attached the back panel, screwing it in quickly, biting his tongue and keeping his hand steady, and when he was finished, he stood and plugged the big TV into the wall and walked around to the front of it, squatting down to turn it on. He stood back up slowly, hands on his hips as the television pointedly did not turn on.

"Son of a bitch," Usopp muttered, pacing around to the side of it.

He grabbed his fruity drink from where he'd left it sitting on the top of the TV and took a short sip, thinking to himself. And then he kicked the television. Nothing. Then he kicked it considerably harder, and the TV, surprisingly, flickered to life, the telltale hissing whine of an old CRT TV ringing in their ears.

Usopp turned to them, taking a long victory drink, finishing it off, and he grinned triumphantly, a fist on his hip. "You all live with a fricking genius."

Nami and Sanji clapped, dutifully impressed, and Zoro looked up from his thick textbook.

"Doesn't look very fixed to me," Zoro said, nodding towards the screen, which simply displayed the monochromatic crackly static of a television that wasn't receiving any signal whatsoever.

Usopp looked over his shoulder, back at the television, and Sanji said for him in a flat voice, "Well, dumbass, we just don't have a…"

Sanji trailed off because the three of them were probably realizing it all at the same time: they didn't have a cable box, or anything to receive channels at all, or anything to play DVDs or anything similar, and come to think of it, probably none of them owned any movies at all anyway—Nami certainly didn't.

Zoro looked at them like they were all idiots. Which was totally unwarranted.

"Well, whatever," Sanji said, lighting another cigarette. He sucked air and smoke past his teeth and shrugged. "We'll find something to watch somehow eventually."

Zoro snorted and Sanji frowned at him for a brief second before relaxing his posture again.

"It's not like you could've fixed that thing. You're too stupid to do anything of value around here," Sanji said lightly, matter-of-factly.

The door opened like it was on cue, and Luffy strode in, looking relatively sweaty and happy to be home. He started to greet everyone in his loud fashion that they'd all started getting very used to when he stopped, noticing the television.

"Hey yo—oh, woah, you guys got a TV! This is great!" Luffy walked over to it, and the thing was almost as tall as Luffy was himself—it had those giant built-in speakers on the bottom that made it two feet taller than it was already—and Nami smiled a little as Luffy looked like he'd just won a trip to Disney World. "I have so many DVDs we can watch!"

Nami turned her head to see Sanji raise his glass, his eyebrows, and the corners of his mouth to Zoro.

Zoro couldn't roll his eyes any harder, and he said to Sanji, continuing their conversation from before Luffy had barged in, "Like you're so capable. All you can do is cook, and not much to brag about."

Sanji's mouth actually dropped open a bit, he was so visibly insulted by Zoro's remark.

Zoro grinned. "Did I hurt your feelings, Chef Boyardee?"

Usopp walked between them, physically ducking under their conversation as he went to the kitchen to refill his drink from the big pitcher of whatever delicious fruit-vodka-rum cocktail Sanji had made. Sanji and Zoro didn't even see him.

"You're literally too stupid to ever be of any actual value to society, despite your deepest efforts. Is there anything you're good at? Because as far as I've seen, the only things you can do are drink a fifth of whiskey and pick your nose, and neither of those traits are particularly impressive," Sanji said, acid lacing his speech.

Zoro opened his mouth to speak, but it was Luffy who said from across the room as he took a seat at the clunky dining table, "Fencing!"

The room turned to look at Luffy.

"What?" Sanji asked from the kitchen counter-bar.

"Fencing! Zoro's a fencer! He fences. You know, swords? It's so cool," Luffy explained, sitting back in his seat.

All eyes fell on Zoro, who looked angrily down at his textbook.

"He has a scholarship!" Luffy added, and eyebrows were raised all around the room. "He's super-good. You guys should see him. I didn't know until I saw him in the gym up at Sabaody!"

"You fence?" Sanji asked Zoro, his voice cracking, and Zoro glared so hard at Sanji that Nami thought he might spontaneously burst into flames or something.

Zoro did not make eye contact with a single person in that room as he spoke in a low and almost dangerous voice.

"Yes."

Usopp took a seat on the long couch next to Nami, and as he watched the impending explosion, he held his plastic cup up a bit, and Nami clinked her glass against it, and they each took a long drink.

Sanji absolutely lost it, covering his mouth as he laughed deep from his stomach, and Nami didn't think she'd ever heard him laugh so hard, and probably Zoro hadn't either, by the look on his face, and Sanji rubbed his eyes, grinning as he said to Zoro, "Your entire existence is like a hilarious joke."

"You wanna talk about jokes?" Zoro spat, twisting around in the couch to address Sanji full-on. "A joke is some fuckwit with ridiculous blond wannabe-emo hair and a speech impediment who dances around the kitchen looking like Martha fucking Stewart, tripping over pretty girls who couldn't take him seriously enough to tell him the time of the goddamn day."

"Aw, he said I was pretty," Nami whispered to Usopp, who snorted.

"Emo hair and what?" Sanji asked, pausing a little, a new cigarette halfway to his mouth.

"Speech impediment," Zoro said, over-annunciating. "You know, that fucked up way you talk."

"I…" Sanji began, slowly pointing at himself, "I don't have a speech impediment?"

"Yes you do."

"No, I fucking don't."

"Then what the hell is that?"

"It's… Are you serious? My god, it's an accent, you dumbfuck, you mother fucking _idiot_. English is my second fucking language."

There was a quiet, "_Ohhh_," from the group, and Sanji gaped at all of them.

"You all… you all honestly thought I had a—" Sanji began, almost stuttering.

"No, Sanji, not at all!" Nami said, trying her damn hardest not to smile, and Usopp wasn't helping, he was fucking giggling into his cup, trying to hide his face. "It's definitely totally obviously—"

"I always wondered what that was!" Luffy said, laughing. "So where are you from?"

Sanji turned his wide, icy blue eyes on Luffy, staring at him in clear and cold disbelief. "I'm… from France," he said slowly, like he was talking to a very small and stupid child.

"_Ohhh_," the rest of the room said again, a little louder, and Sanji looked like he wanted to punch himself in the face. Nami wouldn't put it past him. She could literally feel him fighting a difficult battle to keep from completely erupting.

Zoro chuckled. "So that's why you talk like a dumbass."

"Yeah, well you sound like a fucking neanderthal every time you open your ugly fucking mouth!" Sanji shouted at Zoro, lighting his cigarette and sucking hard on it.

Luffy was holding his face and laughing over at the dining table, doing absolutely nothing to calm the situation at all.

"At least people can understand what the hell I'm saying and I don't sound like I have peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth every time I try to talk," Zoro returned, folding his arms over the back cushion of the couch, egging Sanji on.

It was about then that the door to Chopper's room swung open, and their youngest roommate walked into the hall and gave them all an agitated expression. "What the hell are you guys doing, I'm trying to study and you're being so loud!"

"He scared the shit out of me, I always forget he's here," Usopp whispered to Nami, who smiled because honestly, she agreed.

But Chopper and Usopp were totally ignored as Sanji fired right back at Zoro, "Oh, like anyone's gonna listen to someone who looks like they dipped their hair in fucking green Kool-Aid—you look like a fucking crusty punk, what kind of clown walks around looking like that at your age?"

Zoro grinned openly at Sanji. "Say the word 'development'."

"Oh fuck you," Sanji hissed, and Nami could see his hands curling into tight fists.

Nami had never seen Zoro smile as openly as he was right then, right as he said to Sanji, "You're obviously trying but it's not there yet. Say the word 'focus'."

"You better focus on what the fuck you say next, because if it's the wrong thing, I swear to god and heaven that I will—"

Zoro was trying not to laugh as he cut Sanji off and said, "Not 'fuck-us', idiot, it's 'focus'—"

"I'm going to ram my oxfords so far down your fucking throat that you'll be shitting leather for weeks, you stupid goddamn idiot fucker," Sanji growled, rising from his seat, and Chopper looked a little alarmed.

"Hey, guys—" Chopper's words fell on deaf ears.

"Gonna ram my oxfords so far down your throat—" Zoro repeated, mocking Sanji's speech patterns a bit.

"Oh, I'm going to fuck you up, you stupid shitty asshole," Sanji said in a low voice as he stubbed his cigarette out in the ash tray, and Nami and Usopp leaned together a little.

"Maybe you should go stop them, Chopper looks like he might faint," Nami whispered, and Usopp looked over at her, his drink in front of his mouth.

"Why do I have to be the one to do it? They're about to literally kill each other, I don't wanna fall victim as a civilian casualty in this," Usopp said back to her under his breath.

"Because I'm really comfortable on this couch, Usopp," Nami pouted at him, and Usopp looked back at Zoro and Sanji, who honestly did look like they were about to knock each other out. Zoro was rising from his seat and Sanji was stalking closer, looking like a junkyard dog about to attack an intruder.

Usopp and Nami glanced at Chopper, and he really did seem like he was about to have an anxiety attack. He wasn't as used to these fights as the rest of them were, apparently.

"They won't break your neck by accident in the crossfire," Usopp said, and he had a good point.

"You'll probably live," Nami said, stirring her drink with her straw.

"Hell no."

Luffy was still laughing, and Chopper really did look like he was about to panic and call the police or something, and just as Sanji looked like he was about to wreck Zoro's shit or die trying, the front door flew open and a total stranger walked right into the living room.

"Luffy! Luffy, there you are!"

What in the flipping hell.

"I'm so sorry to impose on your privacy, I really am, I tried calling you several times and your phone didn't seem to be turned on, but I had something very important to tell you, and I felt that this invasion would be justified!"

Luffy was the only one who did not seem utterly dumbstruck by the fact that an extremely tall, extremely old man had just busted into their home in a custom-tailored deep wine-colored velvet suit.

"Oh, hey!" Luffy started to say, but Zoro cut him off.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked, as was seemingly his normal way of greeting unexpected guests.

The old man threw his head back and laughed, really laughed, like it was almost a cackle, and Nami raised her eyebrow at Usopp, who matched her expression.

Luffy laughed with him, and the room was silent otherwise, waiting to be let in on the joke.

"Guys," Luffy said, calming down a little, "this is Brook, he's our landlord!"

"Oh," Zoro said dumbly, and Sanji rolled his eyes.

"It's nice to meet you, uh, sir," Sanji filled in, a little slowly, and Zoro looked back at him like he was stupid. Sanji struggled to maintain a neutral face.

"Sorry about the, uh—" Zoro began, but Brook laughed again.

"Not to worry, I did barge in and all! Technically, I just violated the lease! Oh, but I hope you'll forgive me—you all have been very punctual with paying your deposits and first month's rent, and you seem like very nice tenants," Brook said, grinning at them all, and this old man literally had an actual afro.

He had just admitted to violating the lease. He might've been actually insane. Maybe just senile. But, whatever, the rent was outrageously affordable, so Nami planned on keeping her mouth shut.

Nami had thought it weird at first when Luffy had been the one to hand her the lease contract, but he'd assured her that their landlord was really nice, and he lived next door, and he could just walk it over after she'd signed and... Well. Maybe he'd done that to avoid her having second thoughts upon finding out her landlord was fucking bonkers.

"You had something important to tell me?" Luffy asked, and Brook suddenly remembered himself, sitting down at the table next to Luffy.

"I did! You'll be happy to hear that I was lingering around the women's studies quad," Brook began, and Nami and Usopp exchanged a quick what-in-the-hell look, "and I came to understand that the culinary students are doing an event where free food is being given away, and—"

"Oh shit," Luffy said, immediately serious and very interested. "We need to get down there right now. Can you drive? Or, Usopp, can you? We should hurry—we should leave right this second."

Nami and Usopp both sat and watched while Luffy scrambled to gather up everything he thought he'd need before Usopp even bothered agreeing to drive him. They both turned their gaze on their landlord, who was grinning with a huge mouth, and he was so old and tall and thin that Nami couldn't imagine him eating anything at all, even free culinary student food.

"He's slightly creepy. But endearing, almost?" Nami whispered very quietly into Usopp's ear, and he turned to her and gave her a look.

"He looks like Jack fucking Skellington with an afro."

Nami snorted and shushed him, and they watched as Luffy more or less commanded everyone to join them, and after a couple minutes of arguing—mostly from Chopper, who was convinced he already had a mountain of work to complete this early in the school year—they were all standing and stretching and getting ready to pile into Usopp's old car.

Nami had zero interest in going to a culinary student thing. She wasn't even hungry. And yet, there she was, sitting in the front seat of the station wagon, listening idly as her roommates and her _landlord_ chattered away, crammed into the back seats behind her and Usopp.

She felt a theme building.

* * *

Zoro groggily pulled himself upright, sluggishly swinging his feet over the side of the bed. He fumbled with the phone lying on the bedside table, checking the time. A quarter past nine. He had only been asleep a couple of hours.

He contemplated just rolling back into bed and sleeping a little longer. One or ten more hours.

But then, that bundle of nerves in the pit of his stomach that made him feel like he'd swallowed a rock started to bother him. He was behind. He wasn't even a month into the semester and he was feeling utterly... well, lost.

Yawning a bit too hard, he rolled himself to his feet, looking at the beat-up old desk with disdain. It had so much stuff on it, he couldn't even see the surface. Text books, study guides, supplements, notes. But even with all of the so-called "cheat sheets" for business concepts and terminology, it didn't help a damn bit.

An hour passed. He'd read half the chapter and highlighted a bunch of shit. Anything he didn't really understand, so he could go back and look at it again later.

There were a lot of highlights.

Shit. He couldn't take it anymore. His legs—no, his entire body was feeling restless. Maybe he'd go running or something. Then he'd come back to it and make a little more progress.

More... Had he even made any yet?

He pulled on the same clothes he'd thrown on the floor at the foot of the bed when he'd went to sleep. Black sweatpants, white socks—slightly gray on the bottom—and a dark green hoodie. They were dirty, just like the white t-shirt he'd slept in, but whatever, he'd change after he showered.

His quick run accidentally turned into more than an hour—not his intention, but the roads around the neighborhood were so damn confusing. They twisted and turned, curved into dead ends, and none of the back roads seemed to connect to a recognizable street. After a while, though, he found himself on campus, and then he was mostly able to make his way back to the house. Well, with maybe one or two wrong turns, but he got there.

A shower and a quick meal later, and he was feeling a lot better. He didn't feel like staying in his room, though. Grabbing his Economic Statistics textbook and notes, he went down into the living room to get through a chapter.

A half hour later, the anxiety was slowly creeping back up on him. This was so tedious and slow. But if he kept working at it, he'd show progress. Just like if he kept running, he'd go a little further every day. If he kept lifting weights, he'd be able to pick up a little more each time. Studying was just like that—he just had to work harder.

Footsteps came down the stairs, accompanied by the smell of smoke. Shit, he was in no mood.

He tried to ignore him, but suddenly the pungent scent was right behind him. His jaw slowly started to clench.

"What, seriously?" Sanji asked, leaning over the back of the couch, his head hovering somewhere above Zoro's shoulder. "That's like a sophomore class. What the hell are you doing taking that now?"

"I switched majors." That idiot knew that. He'd told him before.

"Yeah, but still... You're in two, right?"

"Two what?" The _hell_ was he talking about?

"Uh, like you took Econ Stat before, and now you're taking Econ Stat II?"

"Oh. Yeah." What a stupid way to abbreviate a class name.

"Well, that's something at least." Sanji exhaled, an obnoxious stream of smoke wafting in Zoro's direction. "Man, it's going to be awhile before you graduate."

"Yep," Zoro replied shortly. Real helpful comments. Like he didn't already know that. Asshole. He kept his eyes focused on the text, hoping his annoying roommate would get the hint.

Then Sanji disappeared for awhile and Zoro was thankful for it. He tried to reread the page he had been on while that jackass was hovering over him. Nope. It still didn't make a lot of sense.

_The mathematical deﬁnition of probability function is based on three axioms, which are based on our intuitive notion of probability._

Yeah, he had literally no idea what that meant. Oh well. He highlighted a few terms and problems he didn't really get—why were there math equations in a business course, anyway?—and skipped to the next page. He'd try again later. Maybe it'd make more sense after the class happened.

But the next day in class, even after hearing the lecture, he still didn't really get it. What was the purpose of all this, anyway?

The next class wasn't any better—and to make it even worse, by some terrible misfortune, this class was with Sanji.

The class was Business Ethics, and the teacher—Professor Califa—was short-tempered and severe. In addition to having a rigorous course schedule and an impossible number of tests and papers sprinkled into the semester, she was kind of intense about her job.

Like even though most professors pretty much ignored students that showed up late or fucked around on their phone, she'd single them out and interrogate them in front of the whole class. And if, god forbid, someone fell asleep, she'd walk by the student's table and slap her hand down on it as loudly as possible, not even breaking the pace of her lecture. Some poor guy had fallen right out of his chair when she did that during the third or fourth class; Zoro was just glad it wasn't him.

"This isn't high school and you don't get a grade for attendance," she'd explained sharply on the first day of class. "If you want to go home and sleep, then do it."

Zoro's table had been slammed on more than once or twice.

Today, he was crinkling his brow, staring up at the PowerPoint presentation glowing on the screen that covered a good section of the front wall. He was furiously scribbling everything down—maybe it was already in the text, he couldn't quite remember, but he better make sure he got it all, just in case. All the concepts seemed like they were probably the same thing. Why the hell were the names so similar?

He wrote a note about the Securities Act of 1933, about how it regulated offers and sales of securities. Something about the Great Depression. Was that in 1933? He wasn't really sure. But when he looked up again, it said 1934. What? He was pretty sure it'd said 1933 a second ago. Was this a new slide?

It sounded exactly the same. He raised his hand.

"Yes?"

"Uh, is that—is that the same thing?"

Professor Califa frowned deeply as she slipped her glasses further up her nose. "No, they're two different acts. That's why they're on two slides."

"Uh, I mean," Zoro said, trying to string together a more intelligible question. He wasn't good at explaining himself. "I mean, the names are similar, and they sort of sound like they're the same. They, uh, they're both about selling securities, right?"

He almost said _stock. _But were securities stocks? He opened his mouth to start to ask, but he got the feeling that he should've known that.

Califa paused for a moment. Zoro hated it when professors paused like that—like they were struggling to dumb something down.

His eyes flitted away from the teacher for a moment, and he saw the three students in the first row glaring back at him.

Well, one of them was Sanji—he didn't count.

"To put it on the most basic terms, the 1933 Act regulated offers and sales of securities, but it was the Securities Exchange Act—the 1934 Act—that dealt with really enforcing it." Although Califa was a little curt, she spoke slowly, carefully studying Zoro as she explained. "Specifically, it established the SEC."

Those were the most basic terms? Shit.

"The SEC?" Zoro replied. He wasn't sure what that was.

An exasperated whisper from someone sitting near the back of the class. He tried to ignore it. Who cares, anyway, he needed to get this, too.

"The Securities Exchange Commission. You've probably talked about it more extensively in your other classes." She stared at him a moment. Seeing no spark of recognition, she elaborated. "The SEC is the agency that enforces securities laws and regulates exchange of securities."

"Alright..." Zoro replied. She might as well have been speaking a foreign language for how much that explained.

"Let's put it this way. It's against the law to steal, right? But if there was no one to enforce that law, even if some people wouldn't steal, just knowing that law was there, a lot of people would if they knew there was no way they'd be punished even if they were caught. Right?"

"I guess so."

"That's why we have law enforcement—the police can arrest somebody if they steal. So it's like the 1933 Act laid down the rule—it's the law that needs to be followed. But wasn't really enforced until the SEC—the 'policing' part of it—came into existence."

"So the 1934 Act is... the police," Zoro said carefully.

"Precisely."

Okay. That made sense. A lot of sense, actually. Maybe he had this. He scribbled down Califa's surprisingly simple analogy so he wouldn't forget it later.

Unfortunately, while writing, he realized she'd moved onto the next concept, and it seemed totally unrelated. Dammit.

And so, he had to raise his hand again, and ask another question that he could tell at least a few people were annoyed with, from the murmurs and huffs behind him.

Once again, his obnoxious roommate was glaring back at him. What a stupid, awful coincidence that they had not one, but _two _classes together this semester. It was bad enough that they were always crossing paths at home, but to have to keep seeing each other on campus, too...

Well, still, thanks to him he had a place to sleep in he could actually afford and didn't need to mooch off of his friends Johnny and Yosaku any longer. It'd just be easier if he and Sanji maybe didn't have to see each other all the time.

Even the way he sat at the table was kind of irritating. Sanji had his seat pushed back, angling his body away so he could rest an ankle on top of his knee, in a relaxed cross-legged manner, his left hand loosely placed on the thigh of his dockers. Casual.

Professor Califa was talking about securities fraud now.

"We've probably all heard of insider trading—"

Uh, we have?

"—But there are actually a number of things can can be classified as securities fraud."

He wasn't really sure what insider trading was, but he'd heard of ponzi schemes before—pyramid schemes. He could image the triangle-shaped picture from the text book.

"Can anyone give me a couple of examples?"

A guy a few seats down from Zoro raised his hand and smugly called out, "Charles Ponzi!"

Smartass. Like ponzi was a person or something. Yeah, and maybe John and Jeff Ponzi, too.

Califa narrowed her eyes. "Right. But naming off the person who's the namesake isn't exactly clever."

There really was a Charles Ponzi? He was an actual person?

She pointed at another student.

"Bernie Madoff," the young woman called out.

"Good. That's one of the biggest ones. Yes?" She nodded at another student with his hand raised.

"I think that N'Sync guy... The manager or whatever. I can't remember his name, though."

"You're right. Lou Pearlman is his name. You?" Califa pointed at Sanji, who was nonchalantly raising his hand upward, elbow still rested on the table.

"Dancepowder Investments."

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Well, looks like you actually pay attention to the local news—that one hits pretty close to home, doesn't it."

"Yeah. From what I've read, it seems like most of the victims are retirees from around here."

What, did that guy actually read the news?

Califa's eyes drifted over the rest of the class before she returned her gaze back to Sanji. "From the lost looks right now, I'm guessing most of the class isn't too familiar with it. Think you can explain it?"

"Sure," Sani replied. And then, he launched into this ridiculously detailed explanation, citing a bunch of the damn terms Zoro had just written down in his notebook that he didn't even understand. But here was Sanji, using them like it was his fucking hobby.

Zoro pressed his lips in a slight frown. The bastard didn't even seem nervous about it, either—he sure as hell didn't bother sitting up even the slightest bit from his ultra-relaxed pose. Casual as hell.

When he finally ended his explanation, Califa stared at him for a moment, a faint smile playing at the corner of her thin lips. "Well put. I couldn't have said it better myself. And you were able to tie it into what we talked about today—glad to see you're paying attention."

"How could I not?" Sanji replied with practiced flattery.

Jesus Christ.

It only got worse as the class continued. Sanji was called on a few more times—and even though Zoro could barely even grasp the concepts, that bastard apparently understood it well enough to comment on any subject thrown at him.

Zoro pressed both hands to his head, fingers splayed, as he listened to them banter back and forth.

When was this damn class going to end? He couldn't take it another minute. Being there wasn't helping. It didn't matter.

When Professor Califa concluded the lecture, Zoro was the first person out the door.

When Zoro got home, he grabbed two beers from the fridge and retreated up to his room. It was only early afternoon, but whatever. He still had a lot of work to do, and he needed something to calm the steadily increasing pressure taking shelter somewhere within his ribcage. He hated this feeling, hated not making progress, hated that no matter what he tried academically, he felt like he was trying to swim up a river with his legs tied together.

He was actually good at a lot of things. Why the fuck couldn't he do this?

A few hours passed and he was feeling restless. He'd gone down to the kitchen once in between, and now there were three empty beer cans in the little trash can next to his desk—about to be four. He chugged the last few sips, throwing it into the trash with finality. He should get more.

He opened his door to Luffy and Usopp's backs. Luffy was banging on Sanji's door—which was right across from his—and Usopp held his cell phone in front of him. Zoro could see the text message screen pulled up.

"Oh, Zoro!" Luffy spun around, as Sanji's door swung open.

"What's up?" Sanji asked, gaze falling on Luffy. He glanced up and caught Zoro's eye for a second.

Luffy looked back and forth between them, that grin of his spreading across his face.. "You guys wanna go to a party?"

"What, you mean now?" Sanji asked, his eyebrows raising slightly.

"Yeah! My friend's having a party."

"On a Thursday?"

"He's in a frat."

"Oh," Sanji said; apparently that was a perfectly acceptable reason to have a party on a weeknight.

"Come on, it'll be fun." He slung his arm around Sanji's shoulder, yanking him out of his room. "Zoro, you'll come too, right?"

"Uh..."

"Come on, you have to," Luffy insisted as Sanji stumbled and struggled to right himself under Luffy's friendship-headlock.

"Do I?"

"Yeah, come on, everybody's going."

"Is that so."

Usopp nodded, tucking his phone back into his pocket. "Yeah, Nami's at work, but her shift's about to end so I'm going to pick her up on the way."

Sanji finally managed to shove Luffy away from him, and he pushed his hair back and stood up straight, all in one quick jerky movement. He took a deep breath.

"Yeah, sure, why not," he agreed.

He had a class early on Fridays—Zoro knew from living with him only a short while—but he wasn't really surprised that Sanji would opt to go along

"Alright, let's go then. Come on, Zoro."

"I didn't say I was going to," Zoro mentioned, looking back over his shoulder at his empty room. "I need to... Uh, I should probably study more."

Luffy's face fell. "Aw, come on, it wouldn't be the same without you, Zoro."

Zoro bit his lip, eyes fixed on his messy desk. He'd been trying to study all night. Would a few hours make a difference?

"I should probably study too, but it's just a couple hours," Usopp added. "We've all got to take a break sometimes."

"Yeah, it's just a _couple hours_," Luffy echoed.

"Even Usopp understands you have to actually live at some point," Sanji said, ignoring Usopp's narrowed eyes. He turned towards Zoro, bunching his shoulders up in an obvious shrug. "You might as well just go."

Zoro rubbed his eyes, shaking his head slightly. But he caved. "Okay, yeah, whatever."

"Awesome," Luffy smiled. "Alright. Let's go tell Chopper and then we can go!"

"I thought you said everyone was going," Zoro said.

"Yeah, I did?" Luffy looked back at him, tilting his head slightly. "I mean. Chopper _is_ going."

Usopp was already halfway down the stairs when he called back up to them, "Luffy just hasn't told him yet!"

Luffy followed Usopp down the stairs, and Zoro turned back toward Sanji, who was already watching him as he took a thoughtful drag off of his cigarette. "Hurry up and put on your party clothes," he said, as pompous and jeering as he could be.

He slipped back into his room and slammed the door—probably to put on his own party clothes, or whatever, knowing that dumbass.

What a fucking idiot.

Zoro realized he was clenching his teeth. Forcing himself to take a deep breath, he headed downstairs. He'd grab another beer while he waited.

Getting Chopper to come along might have bordered on kidnapping. But ultimately, he came, and the five of them piled into Usopp's station wagon.

Once they picked up Nami, they headed over to this shitty little frat house on the outskirts of campus—the opposite side of their house—and the second they walked in the front door, Zoro really wished they'd done something else.

The music was loud and terrible. It boomed excessively, and the bass made his chest jump in an uncomfortable rhythm, even before he walked in the wide-open front door. There were some kind of letters on the front of the house, some kind of Alpha Omega Beta Gamma Stardust Megatron, he didn't know what the fuck they meant and he didn't really care.

If there was one thing he knew about the Greek frats on campus, though, it was that if someone had an in, there was usually a lot of free flowing booze. And Luffy barely made it inside before he greeted three different people.

Apparently Luffy knew half of the entire Sabaody student body.

Although for this party, Zoro was pretty sure he wouldn't have been stopped even if he had gone in on his own—most of the people hanging out in the entryway were already too hammered to care.

The entryway opened into a living room and kitchen, where the music pumped even louder. It was more crowded than he would've liked. It's not that he didn't do well in crowds, he just, well, disliked them. Especially ones like this, where with each step, someone else annoyed him. Wow, there were a lot. A lot of fucking people.

Guy in a t-shirt with a tie. Two girls practically tripping onto each other, screaming about how drunk they were. Dude in a fedora hat. A high five christened with a loud shout of "Bro!" in front of his face. Some guy yelling about brewskies. A girl with running make-up, dancing with her top off. Some kid double-fisting beers. Some other kid talking about crushing pussy.

Zoro kind of hated frats.

But after he maneuvered his way through the living room, he found himself in the kitchen, and that was the destination he really needed to reach.

There was an island in the center of the kitchen covered in so many bottles of beer and liquor, he couldn't even tell what color the counter top was. It'd make the music and throngs of people a little easier to tolerate, anyway.

"Here," Luffy said, handing him a red solo cup full of something—it was dark and smelled like rum—and Zoro look a long swallow without asking what it was. He wasn't exactly sure how Luffy'd made it to the kitchen first, but it seemed like he was familiar with the house.

When Nami, Usopp, and Chopper finally squeezed their way into the kitchen, Chopper already looked like he was at his limit.

"I don't understand, is this what parties are like?" he asked shrilly, his wild eyes darting in seemingly every direction at once. "It's so loud and everybody's already so drunk."

"Well. Yes and no?" Usopp told him, reaching over him to grab a bottle of clear liquor.

A pair of something turquoise-colored and lacy whizzed through the air, stopping when it bounced and landed harmlessly on Chopper's shoulder.

"Some parties are better than others," Usopp said, picking the foreign object off Chopper's shoulder, hooking it around his index finger and holding it out to the younger man.

Chopper's eyes did that thing where they got all huge, and he stumbled back a step, nearly knocking Nami over.

Usopp laughed and dropped what was clearly a pair of girl's underwear on the floor, stepping around them as he poured himself a glass of what had to be vodka.

Chopper looked like he was about to keel over.

"Come on, let's get a drink," Nami told Chopper, smiling gently as she pressed a hand on his shoulder, urging him forward.

"What? Are you crazy?" he shouted, his eyes looking like they just might bug out of his head. "I can't drink!"

But between Nami and Luffy, they rapidly managed to coax a clear plastic cup filled to the brim into Chopper's hands. He never really stood a chance in the first place. Luffy alone was pretty convincing, but Nami could probably convince Chopper into a whole lot more than weeknight drinking, if she really set her mind to it.

She was pretty impressive. And slightly scary. Well, no not sca... Okay, she was scary. Fine.

Chopper'd only had what was probably a few sips, but he was already pink-cheeked and grinning like a dip. If only it was still that easy.

The music was getting increasingly worse. It was remixed and spun and dropped... What was this shit called? Dubstep? Whatever, he didn't care, it was loud and kind of dumb. It kind of sounded like cars fucking. People were drunkenly dancing to it, rubbing against each other, rubbing against him as he tried to walk past them.

Sanji was in the corner, cigarette between two fingers that were wrapped around the neck of a bottle of beer, and he was chatting up a couple of pretty women. The expression on his face was really annoying, like he thought he was smoother than he actually was.

Well, really, there was no question about that.

"Hey, dick, you can't smoke in here," a guy said to him.

"Huh, that's news to me. I just walked past five other people smoking right in your living room."

"They're not smoking _cigarettes _though, asshole."

"Oh. I'm really sorry," Sanji said, tilting his head and kneading his eyebrows together a bit like he was genuinely concerned, and he exhaled a fat stream of thick smoke that wafted all around the frat guy's face.

Zoro rolled his eyes and honestly didn't care if Sanji got jacked straight in the face. Which wouldn't surprise Zoro, if it happened. He deserved it. What a dumb argument. Sanji really was an asshole.

So he wandered around. Drank. Wandered some more. It didn't take him long to lose track of Luffy. But that didn't really matter.

Although he wasn't much of a party-goer, he had to admit... This one was _terrible_.

And he needed another drink.

Zoro scanned the room. Luffy was chatting with a guy near the door, and Sanji was still in the corner, talking to several different girls than the ones he'd been chatting up earlier. And yep, that was it, he didn't know anyone else here and there were too many overtly obnoxious people for him to really care to make any new acquaintances.

After a few wrong turns, he found his way back to the kitchen—which also happened to be near where where Usopp, Nami and a red-faced Chopper were sitting, talking and chuckling to each other, far away from everyone else. Seemed like a good place to be. After making himself another drink, he joined them.

He gulped down his drink quickly, not really paying attention to any one person in particular, although there was a woman with long, blue hair swept back into a ponytail standing right in his line of sight, so his eyes sort of automatically kept falling back to her—particularly when a frat guy approached her, talking just loudly enough for him to hear every dumb word.

"Hey, I'm so sorry to bother you, but I had to tell you, okay, you look incredible," he started.

Her eyes widened slightly in surprise. "Oh, um, wow, thank you—"

"Like, I'm kind of blown away by you right now," he went on, cutting her off.

"Uh, yeah, thank you," she repeated, shifting on her feet uncomfortably. "That's so nice of you to say..."

"Are you drinking anything? Can I get you a drink?"

"Oh that's okay, I still have this..." she said, raising a bottle of some kind of sugary sweet malt liquor that only had a sip or two left in it.

"What, that's almost gone!" he said. "Come on, I'll get you something else."

God, this fucking guy. People like this were so irritating. Zoro clenched his teeth a bit as he turned his head, forcing himself to tune the frat dipshit out.

Zoro cleared his throat and Usopp glanced at him.

"Hey, how long do you wanna stay here?" he asked, standing up and glancing around the party.

"I'm ready whenever you guys are," Zoro replied.

"Yeah, this is pretty awful," Nami agreed, pushing back her chair and standing with him. Zoro stood as well, and Chopper stayed where he sat, clutching an empty plastic cup, his head dipped a little and his elbows on his knees.

Zoro scowled in Sanji's direction. "But good luck convincing Pepé Le Pew over there it's time to go," he muttered, sort of imagining he was saying the same things the dumbass standing with the blue-haired girl had just spouted off. He sort've seemed like that type of guy.

"Well, I _am_ the one with the car, so I have a little bit of power in this," Usopp said, holding up a single finger. And then he held up another, like he was counting. "But Luffy was the one who invited us all, so I don't want to rush him out too fast. Uh, I think he said this was his friend's party, right?"

Zoro nodded in agreement.

"I'm never coming to another party again," Chopper groaned sullenly, fingers curled around his cup a little too tightly. Zoro glanced at him and smiled slightly. Was he already slurring, just from one drink?

"It's not always like this," Usopp assured Chopper, patting him on the back, which Chopper didn't seem to appreciate very much.

"Vivi, huh? What a pretty name. Fits you perfectly," the man in the kitchen said, loudly enough to force Zoro to pay attention to the conversation again. Great.

"Thank you," came her automatic, apprehensive reply.

"So, Vivi, some friends of mine and I are over in the other room, you should come hang out with us for a bit."

"Oh, I'm waiting for a couple friends here—"

"The house isn't that big, they'll find you just fine!"

"Really, that's okay, I'm just going to—"

He leaned in closer to her, slipping an arm around her shoulders. "Oh my god, you worry too much! Are you always such a worrier? C'mon, enjoy yourself for, like, ten minutes here."

Vivi tried to twist away, but he firmly rested his hand on her shoulder, holding her in place as he started to walk forward. Unable to break free, she took a few reluctant steps along with him.

"It's not that, I just—"

"Calm down, I'm a nice guy!"

"Who the fuck are you?"

And suddenly, Nami was there.

"Why are you fucking touching my friend right now?"

Nami spoke loudly, and like she owned that entire house. She had complete authority immediately. Which was weird, seeing someone that small suddenly become that large. She had already, somehow, wedged herself between Vivi and this douchebag.

"Who the fuck are—" he started to say, but before he could finish the question, Nami, fucking somehow, removed Vivi from his grip and glared goddamn daggers at the frat guy.

"It doesn't matter who I am! What matters right now is that you were touching my fucking _friend_, and you are being a pain in her ass, and you need to get away from us right now." She jammed an index finger into his sternum.

"You are being fucking insane right now, alright—"

"You haven't seen insane, prick," Nami said, and her voice was low, and she leaned into her finger and he actually took a step backwards, holding up his arms a bit. Like she was holding a gun to him.

"I was literally just talking to her."

Out of the corner of his eye, Zoro saw a flash of blond. Surprisingly enough, it was Sanji, who had somehow managed to pry himself away from the corner full of sorority girls. Um. What?

While Nami continued telling the douchey frat guy exactly what the fuck he was doing and exactly why he was an asshole, Sanji stepped over to Vivi, bending over at the waist as he whispered something to her.

The frat guy who had been hitting on her didn't even notice.

As they walked past Usopp and Chopper, Sanji gave Usopp a nod, which Usopp apparently understood.

"Come on, Chopper," Usopp said, jostling Chopper's shoulder. "Let's head out to the car."

"Okay," Chopper said weakly.

Zoro nearly got up to follow them, but instead, he leaned back in his seat and watched Nami. This was kind of interesting. She was pretty intense—he sure as hell never wanted to be on the receiving end of one of her ass-chewings.

"Look, I don't know what—"

"I don't even know why you're still talking!" Nami interjected. "Why are you still here?"

"The fuck is your problem!" he cried out, his hands up in the air, glancing back over his shoulder like somebody was going to give him some support, but no one was there.

Including Vivi.

He did a double-take at the empty space behind him when he saw she was absent.

"Look, there is literally _no_ reason for you to be standing here anymore. So okay. Bye. You need to leave," she said, waving a hand at him sarcastically.

"You know what? Fuck you, bitch," he said to Nami, his face twisting into an ugly scowl as he threw up a middle finger and walked away.

Nami turned to Zoro. He fully expected her to be in some kind of crazed rage, but to his surprise, she just grinned at him—calm and triumphant.

He couldn't help but chuckle a little. "Geez. Did you really know that girl?"

"Nah," she said, shaking her head. "But guys need to not fuck around. If a girl says no, she means no and that's that, there's no fucking alternative."

"You're kind of scary."

She smiled at Zoro and shrugged her shoulders, all innocence that absolutely wasn't real. "Good, make sure you remember that. Now come on, let's get outta here." She grabbed him by the sleeve of his t-shirt, pulling him along.

He reunited with everyone out front, noticing that they'd managed to grab Luffy on their way out.

As soon as Vivi saw Nami, she grinned and made an immediate approach. She laughed a little, putting her hands on her hips. "Oh my god, thank—"

"No problem. You're Vivi, right? I'm Nami." She returned her broad smile, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Nami," Vivi said, her long ponytail falling over her shoulder as she leaned forward a bit, "you are awesome."

Zoro glanced over at Sanji, who was leaning casually against the porch railing, a cigarette perched on the edge of his lip. He'd expected him to be all over Vivi, now that he'd sort of rescued her and all, but instead he was leisurely chatting to Chopper about who-knows-what.

Huh. Just, huh.

"You're way too nice. Has anyone ever told you that?" Nami was saying to Vivi.

Vivi curled her lips inwards as she smiled. "Well. Alright. You're not necessarily the first person to say that to me."

"I bet not," Nami laughed. "But seriously, you can't let douchebags like that walk all over you. You can't always be nice to everyone!"

"You're right, you're right, I need to stop being so… nice. I guess?"

"Yes," Nami said, smiling. "You do."

"I'm sorry if this is forward and I'm a little drunk, but I'm glad I met you," Vivi said, and they both laughed.

They wound up hanging out with Vivi for a couple of hours at the house after that, and Luffy said he had some alien documentaries, so he put one of those on, and they stayed up drinking and watching crappy television until late.

Way too late.

If Usopp hadn't banged on his door the next morning, waking him up and offering to give him a ride to his class, Zoro would've never made it in time. Maybe it would have been just as well if he hadn't, though. He was so tired, his ability to follow along with the Econ Stat lecture was even shittier than usual.

What a stupid fucking way to abbreviate a class name. And he couldn't stop doing it now.

When he was done with classes for the day, he retreated to his room, staring at the nonsensical notes he'd tried to take during class. A lot of the words faded into jagged curves and sharp lines disappearing at the edge of the page; he'd nodded off more than few times.

Fuck. These were useless. And so was the damn book.

There was a knock at his door.

"What?" he yelled sharply, not having a good place to aim his frustrations.

The door swung open abruptly—almost sounded like it was kicked open—and Zoro turned around to glare at whoever was interrupting him

Suddenly, a notebook was launched right at his face; it would've hit him smack dab in the center of his forehead if his quick reflexes hadn't kicked in. Zoro blocked it with his arm and it tumbled harmlessly to the floor.

"There ya go, asshole," Sanji called out, leaning into the doorway, one forearm resting on the frame. How could someone have such obnoxious posture.

"What the fuck is your problem?" Zoro snapped, his brow twisting into a deep scowl.

"What?" Sanji said jeeringly, an obnoxious smirk twisted across his features. "I'm helping you, you ungrateful prick."

"What are you talking about?"

"My Econ Stat notes."

That fucking abbreviation _again_.

Zoro stared dumbly at the notebook on the floor. Begrudgingly, he picked it up and opened it to the first page, squinting as he read. "Wow, this is..."

"Helpful, right?"

"No... I was going to say terrible." Zoro looked up at him, deadpanning. "Your handwriting looks like shit."

"Fuck you," Sanji replied reflexively, but his tone was actually pretty relaxed. Almost teasing, maybe.

Zoro's eyes drifted back to the notebook—yeah, the handwriting was bad, but they were organized and clear. Was it actually possible for people to just take notes so easy to follow, right in the middle of a class like that?

Feeling eyes still on him, he looked back up at Sanji. He was staring at him, the corner of his lip obnoxiously upturned as he arrogantly puffed away on his cigarette.

"You look like an idiot right now," Zoro told him, narrowing his eyes.

Turning around and flippantly waving a hand in the air, as if to say whatever, Sanji slammed his door closed.

He really did look like an idiot. Total asshole. But. Okay, Zoro had to admit—no, he wouldn't admit it. Nope. Fuck that.

Goddamn it.

Maybe there was a shred of something not totally loathsome that occasionally peeked out.

Zoro bit down on the end of his pen, his brows knitted together as he stared at the spidery scrawl in Sanji's notebook, not really taking in any of the words. He didn't have time to worry about his insufferable roommate or his stupidly haughty attitude. Because it didn't matter. He didn't matter.

What mattered was that Zoro really _did_ have to understand this shit. This was a core class and he had to pass it to graduate. And he couldn't just _barely_ pass, he had to do more than that, because—shit, because C's and D's weren't going to be enough this time.

He couldn't waste any time fucking around.

Abruptly, he pushed his chair away from the desk, opening up the bottom door of the rickety desk, which was where he'd tossed all of his supposedly important papers when he'd gotten there last month. Before that, they'd been in an old shoebox, so a drawer seemed as good a place as any to keep them.

Organization wasn't really his thing, though, so they were all mixed up. In fact, maybe some of them weren't that important. A random selection of papers were shuffled together, like cell phone bills and bank statements, his high school diploma, birth certificate, the warranty replacement for a laptop he didn't even have anymore, old random school papers he thought he might need to reference again, and—then he found what he was looking for. The letter he'd gotten from the school, right before his old apartment had become uninhabitable.

A warning letter about his low GPA.

Zoro reread it for what was probably the thirtieth or fortieth time before he shoved it back into the drawer.

* * *

**A/N: omg you are over 30k words into this fic and you're still here and you are so wonderful, dear reader**

**we wanna say, most of all, thank you so much for all the reviews and follows and kudos and reblogs and etc etc man like we rEAD YOUR TAGS AND COMMENTS, WE READ ALL THE THINGS, AND LITERALLY i mean okay personally i spent most of that day we first posted sitting on my bed hugging myself and grinning like a huge dipdip. raquel maybe cried. basically we want you to understand our overwhelming gratitude for your support thus far, and we hope you like what you've read up to this point. **

**also huge special thank you to those that've drawn fanart already wOWZERS for real wow dream come true and i'm not exaggerating. we will have a permanent link to all the fanart on that little mnm portal page on tumblr, which you can find a link to on all mnm chapter tumblr posts and also on my blog and raquel's. **

**alright. that's enough talking okay okay. hopefully we'll see you in chapter 3: october ~*~*~**


	3. October

**Chapter 3: October**

* * *

Sanji strolled along the bustling campus, a cigarette hanging from his mouth like he'd been born with it there, and he wondered why he'd gotten there so damn early.

Okay, he really had had a reason—he'd gotten up early to spend an hour or so in the library because he had a paper due in his Managerial Economics course in about, oh, three days or so, and it was probably time for him to get started on the research, i.e., go look up a couple of relevant articles to cite as sources and bullshit the rest.

But as it turned out, all of articles he needed were actually online, so with the help of a pretty girl in a pony tail and glasses—because the student portal was pretty confusing, and he just wanted to print off some fucking article's for god's sake, and for some reason whenever he clicked on anything, it didn't do what he wanted it to do—he'd acquired everything he needed to fudge together a research paper. And by that point, he'd been more concerned with getting her to come get come coffee with him—but sadly, she declined, said she had too much work to do.

Oh well. At least he had the articles he needed. He'd read them tonight. Probably. Didn't feel like it right now.

He walked the length of the campus, chain-smoking and admiring the, uh, scenery.

There were so many pretty girls at this school. And, alright, he knew he was a shallow asshole, like that wasn't news to him. But he couldn't help it. A woman's body was a beautiful thing, and he had this problem of falling in love with beautiful things so easily.

But maybe it wasn't love. Or maybe it was? Because when it happened, when he did sleep with someone, he loved them so hard, with all his might, but he never felt the same in the morning. He felt like he was still looking for something. Like he was grasping at straws. And it was never long before he fell in love all over again.

Then a terrible sight ripped him away from his mostly pleasant thoughts. Well, pleasant in comparison, anyway.

Sanji'd never understood why gyms tended to have giant windows instead of walls. Maybe sporty people got some kind of weird boner from having a bunch of lazy fucks being able to peer inside and drool over their fitness or something. Whatever the reason, the campus gym was no different—and Sanji was pretty sure he'd just seen a flash of green hair inside. Only one dumbfuck he knew had green hair.

He'd stopped dead in his tracks, taking the last drag off of his cigarette as he glanced over his shoulder. There weren't any people around. Not that it fucking mattered. After stubbing his cigarette out on the rim of a trashcan, he took a few steps closer to the nearest window, until he was close enough to the glass to see a little more clearly inside. Yep, he was right—it was his fucking roommate. The motherfucking _fencer. _

Sanji cupped his hands around his eyes, leaning against the glass as Zoro squared off against his opponent. He looked fucking hilarious, with his arm raised up behind him like that. He looked like a Musketeer.

There wasn't a lot of leaping or jumping and dodging like Sanji imagined there to be. Rather, it was much more controlled than all that. A lot faster.

Sanji meant to laugh, but he was distracted. Zoro stood still, watching his opponent up to the exact second that she moved. And the motion was so quick that Sanji's eyes couldn't follow, and he assumed all the people standing around the match that looked like judges couldn't follow either, because the two people with the swords—foils? Uh… what were they called… anyway—Zoro and his partner separated, and his opponent motioned to those standing at each corner of the ring.

The tip of Sanji's nose touched the glass.

The point went to Zoro, seemingly.

Sanji hadn't even seen him make contact.

They squared off again and every time the girl—Zoro's opponent—made a lunge for him, Zoro kind of spun his foil thing around hers and knocked it away. And when he went for her, it was so quick, he threw his left arm back and extended his right so far, he stabbed her right in the side. Well, he didn't really stab her. Sanji saw his saber—saber was what they were called, that's right—bend under the pressure.

They took their masks off, and the cute girl smiled at him, shaking her head, and Sanji was stuck watching her for a few seconds before looking back at Zoro, who wasn't even fucking sweating.

He looked silly as hell. But fuck, it was a little badass.

Like, okay, he'd heard that this was the thing Zoro did—that apparently the idiot actually managed to get some kind of sports scholarship for it—but to hear it and to see it actually happening were two totally different things. For several incomprehensible moments, Sanji just stared at him.

Even though he was trying to casually stand outside the giant window like he was just killing time, he felt like his face was practically pressed against the glass like some kind of fucking creep.

He should probably go. Someone on the Sabaody Fencing Team was going to see him. All Zoro had to do was turn his head. Which would be embarrassing. And Sanji went to pull himself from the window and go about his day, but—

Zoro put his mask back on, and he faced a different opponent—a guy taller than him, who seemed to pose no more challenge to Zoro than the first girl had. Although that girl had looked really good doing the whole sword fighting thing.

Zoro didn't look in Sanji's direction even once.

The level of focus was sort of mystifying. Sanji was skilled at bouncing around and doing thirty different things simultaneously—partially thanks to his lifetime in a kitchen—but to concentrate so intensely on just one thing for that long was unimaginable. He couldn't even study like that; he had to take constant breaks, had to chain smoke, or maybe stop and make a phone call or turn on the TV for a few minutes or something.

In fact, after watching less than ten minutes, Sanji already felt his concentration starting to drift; but meanwhile, sparring match after match, never once did Zoro falter.

After several matches all in a row, Zoro didn't lose. Not once.

Well. Maybe he was pretty fucking good. He did have a scholarship and all. He was almost kind of... graceful.

Wow, fucking gross, was that really the word he wanted to use?

Zoro was built like a linebacker—they were the bulky muscle guys on a football team, right? Right—and this looked more like a sport for someone built like a gymnast, or maybe even a dancer. It was kind of like a dance, in a way.

Ugh. _Ugh. _ Again, another awful thought. What the hell was wrong with him today? Fully disgusted with himself, he abruptly turned on his heel and headed toward his next class that he would still be way too early for.

If Zoro could concentrate like that, why the hell were his grades so shitty?

It didn't matter—nothing about that bastard made any sense to him, and he wasn't worth the energy to think about.

He slouched down in a seat near the front and edge of the Business Ethics classroom and made a half-hearted attempt to flip through the textbook.

As Professor Califa took her place at the front of the room, Sanji watched out of the corner of his eye as Zoro rushed to make it inside the classroom just in time. Idiot must've spent too long _practicing_. Ah, shit, he almost cracked a smile at that.

At the end of the class, Califa returned one of their assignments from last week. Sanji smirked as he saw the 98 at the top of the page—very typical of her. Even if it was perfect, she'd find a reason for shaving off a couple of points, like it was physically impossible for her to write the number 100. He skimmed the one small comment she'd made—two point deduction. In a question about a breach of contact, he hadn't used the actual _word _consideration. Fine. Okay. Not really necessary because of how he'd explained it, but he got a 98, no need to worry about it any further.

Class let out and Sanji found himself walking just a few steps behind Zoro when they got outside. He was walking at an excruciating slow pace, and Sanji nearly breezed right past him out of irritation, but when he noticed the deep frown on Zoro's face, he paused. His gaze shifted to the rumpled paper clutched in his hand. It was heavily marred with red ink and the score circled at the top of the page was pretty fucking dismal.

"You've got to be kidding me," Sanji said aloud, snatching the paper from Zoro's grip quicker than he could react—and Sanji was actually a little impressed with himself, because he knew Zoro could react pretty quickly. Must be all those reflexes he honed as a _fencer—_it took a lot of composure for him to not to break into a laugh at the thought.

"Hey!" Zoro shouted, and he spun around, gaping at Sanji, who'd stopped in his place to read through some of the paragraphs that had been sliced and diced by Professor Califa's red pen.

Wow, and it was... Really bad. Forget missing _one_ element of contract, Zoro hadn't even managed to get _any_ of the four. In fact, as Sanji skimmed the page, he was fairly sure Zoro didn't quite get was a breach of contract _was_.

It was kind on infuriating, actually. Was it possible to miss the point _this much_?

"You're godawful at this," Sanji commented, carefully maintaining an air of amusement, holding the paper up for Zoro to see. On one hand, it _was _amusing—and on the other hand, he sure as hell didn't want Zoro to realize he was bugged by it, not even a little bit.

"Fuck off. And give that back," Zoro said, furrowing his eyebrows a bit. He looked kind of tired. Well, more tired than usual.

"You sure you're cut out for this business shit?" Sanji asked, holding the paper back out to him, and Zoro yanked it back and folded it several times, jamming it in his pocket.

"Are you always this fucking nosy?" Zoro responded, and Sanji smiled a little.

Sanji shrugged, as he pulled his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. They'd gotten a little smashed. Well.

Zoro turned and started walking, and Sanji nonchalantly kept stride with him, even as he lit his cigarette—they were going to the same place after all, unfortunately—and Zoro said nothing.

"Why're you so awful at this? I remember last year, you were shitty, too. Why'd you pick business, anyway?" Sanji asked, taking a leisurely drag off of his cigarette.

"I was a lot shittier in my last major—not that it's any of your goddamn business."

"That's pretty impressive," Sanji quipped, and Zoro clenched his hands into fists.

"I'll get my shit together."

"Sure." It actually wasn't the first time Sanji'd noticed that Zoro had something come back with embarrassing marks. "Your overall grade in there has to be pretty fucking lousy, right?"

"Says the guy who gets praise from the teacher to compensate constant rejection from everyone else."

Scratch that, fuck him, to bomb a paper that badly—he deserved the bad grade. Let him spend eight years getting his bachelor's degree, see if he cared.

Seriously, it wasn't just annoying, it was goddamn infuriating. Okay, Sanji didn't really _like_ Zoro. Actually, he hated him, literally hated him. But at the same time, when he watched him fail this shit over and over again—the spring semester was like that, and this semester wasn't off to a better start, for sure—it frustrated him.

It made him feel impatient.

He resolved not to think about it anymore, and he was actually pretty successful, because the next few days were obnoxiously insane. Friday came, and that stupid paper was due, and after two classes, he had to go to straight to work.

After what felt like the longest, stupidest shift in awhile, Sanji finally made it back home. He intended on going straight to bed—he didn't even want to think about how sleep deprived he was.

Before he even had the chance to click the door closed behind him, a far too enthusiastic voice greeted him, the loud pitch uncomfortably sharp against his eardrums. The greeting wasn't unwelcome, it was just—it was really fucking loud.

"Sanji, you're finally home!" Luffy shouted, which was wholly unnecessary, since he was sitting at the dining table that was literally ten feet away from the front door, tops, but it was his preferred decibel, probably.

Sucking on his cigarette, drawing in a jagged breath, Sanji nodded as he glanced at the stranger at the table sitting across from Luffy and Usopp. Despite the mild fall evening, the guy was wearing a black winter cap that seemed to nearly swallow his head, the brim mostly shielding his eyes, so only his nose and mouth were visible.

It was a really dumb look.

"Tralagal brought meat, so we were hoping you'd cook it for us," Luffy went on.

Tralagal? Sanji's eyes wandered to the man in the hat again.

"You'll do it, right, Sanji?"

"Please," Usopp added, craning his neck to look back at Sanji, concern painted over his face. What the hell, was Usopp starting to grow a beard? "Otherwise I'm going to have to cook it, and—"

"I'll do it," Sanji said, raising his hand to make him stop, choosing to ignore his facial hair for the time being. "I—I can cook it, whatever it is, just, let me get changed first."

So much for sleep. But Luffy and Usopp had asked him to do a thing—a thing that they would absolutely fuck up if given the chance—and fuck, they were his fucking friends. Sanji was totally powerless.

How many hours had he been awake, anyway? No, he didn't want to know—he'd gotten up at the asscrack of dawn, after maybe two hours of sleep, tops, to finish that stupid fucking Managerial Economics paper. After two classes, he'd had to rush straight to work from the campus, because the asshole who did the schedule put him on way earlier than he was supposed to be.

And it just didn't end. Someone had overbooked the reservations again—probably that shithead shift manager Fullbody—so it had been a nightmare in the kitchens. By the time the last customers left and everyone was cleaned up in the back, it was nearly two hours later than he would have normally gotten out.

In fact, he hadn't gotten much sleep any night that week. If the human body actually needed to repay its sleep deficit, Sanji'd probably have to catch up with a lengthy coma. Might be nice.

Trying not to drag his tired feet, Sanji nearly walked headlong into a dark-haired man, several inches taller than him, who must've come from the bathroom at the end of the hall.

Taking a fluid sidestep, Sanji pulled his cigarette out of his mouth, craning his neck slightly to get a better look at his face. Oh, good, another asshole wearing a hat. "Wasn't paying attention, sorry."

"Neither was I," the tall man replied quietly. A shiver ran up Sanji's spine at the sound of his voice—it was somehow silky but chilling, its flat tone startling devoid of emotion. Sanji narrowed his eyes, studying the stranger's expressionless face—the guy's tired eyes were heavily accented by impossibly dark circles underneath.

He looked exactly how Sanji felt, actually.

The tall man reached up to grab the edge of his hat, adjusting it indiscernibly. Sanji raised an eyebrow, noting the tattoos on his fingers. EATH? What the hell is that?

But then the other man smoothly slipped past him and Sanji remembered just how desperately he'd been wanting to change his clothes for the past few hours. He headed up to his room and peeled off the white double-breasted jacket that was part of his tawdry, cliché work uniform. Some asshole had accidentally knocked a plate right into him and he hoped he never had to smell duck confit again.

Bursting out of his room in clean button-down shirt and a fresh pair of slacks, his second wind started to kick in—or maybe his third or fourth, it was hard to keep track anymore—and he felt ready to get back to cooking, even if it had been the thing he had been doing for the last several hours. With a bit more of a beat in his step, he stuck a new cigarette in his mouth and returned to the group downstairs.

"I heard you brought meat... Tralagal, is it?" Sanji asked, his gaze falling on the man with the ridiculous arctic-weather hat nearly covering his eyes.

"Oh, that's not Tralawful, that's Penguin," Luffy told him.

"Penguin...?" Sanji repeated. The hell is up with these guys' names?

Penguin smiled disarmingly. "Nice to meet ya. Sanji, right?"

"Yeah." Sanji's gaze shifted to the man with the tattoos. "So you're Trala—"

"Trafalgar Law," he replied flatly.

"Oh. I, uh... must've heard wrong."

"You didn't, unfortunately. But call me Law, it's easier that way." His voice stayed eerily level as he spoke. Law narrowed his eyes, glancing at Luffy, who was sitting next to him, grinning. "I always tell him the same thing."

"Will you cook now, Sanji?" Luffy asked eagerly, ignoring—or maybe oblivious to—the blatant creep factor Law had going on.

"Yeah. Is the meat in the fridge?"

"I'll go with you," Law said, rising to his feet, calmly ambling into the kitchen ahead of Sanji.

"Uh, it's okay, I can handle it," Sanji replied, tugging at the collar of his shirt—like, fuck this guy. It was weird to have some stranger lead him into his own fucking kitchen.

"You'll see," Law responded.

Fucking cryptic, but, fine. He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray at the edge of the kitchen counter before he met Law at the refrigerator.

Sanji's edginess quickly subsided when Law leaned down and pulled out an enormous cut of meat from the bottom row. Sanji easily recognized it as being an entire half of a short loin.

"What the fuck," he murmured, pressing a finger to his lips, staring at the oversized hunk of meat. "Where did you even get this? It's got to be over ten pounds."

"Twelve and a half," Law replied, setting the cut of beef, which was wrapped in a thin plastic sheet, on the top of the counter.

Jaw slightly agape, Sanji studied it carefully, growing further impressed because for real, what the fuck. "The grade of it, too. It's top quality. Perfect marbling—where did you get it?"

"I work at a carnicería."

Sanji raised an eyebrow. "Huh. Well, yeah, that's better than most of the grocery store butcher shops we have around here, but this must've cost a lot."

"Let's say I got an employee discount," Law told him, nonchalantly perusing Sanji's knife block. He smiled faintly as he pulled out a 12-inch butcher knife. "You have a good selection here. Tell me how you want the pieces cut."

"Oh, there's no need to do that, I can take care of it," Sanji told him—although as he mulled it over, he hadn't worked with such a large cut of meat many times before. Even the steaks at Mariejois came pre-cut.

"It's alright. It can be difficult to butcher this cut." The faint smile increased slightly. "I'm not a cook, but I'm pretty good at slicing into meat."

Sanji sucked in an uneasy breath—what weird fucking phrasing. As he started grabbing other ingredients to prepare a side to go with the steaks, his gaze kept drifting back to Law's hands.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up as he realized what the tattoos along the digits of his fingers spelled: _DEATH_. Yet as he watched him handle the bulky knife with chilling precision, it seemed almost fitting; like he was born to slice up flesh and bone.

An involuntary shudder ran up Sanji's spine as he forced his attention back to chopping garlic into immaculately minced pieces. Everything about this guy was really fucking eerie. Slipping into auto-pilot, his mind started to wander.

Didn't they watch some documentary of Luffy's where several seemingly-autopsied bodies were found abandoned somewhere in South America—or maybe it was Central America? They were cut with startling perfection, more skilled than most surgeons, and certainly better than any of the rural country doctors in the area.

An eyewitness had seen one of the victims being taken away by a group of tall, limber beings that seemed almost inhuman.

What the fuck was with Luffy and his alien DVDs?

Sanji's eyes drifted back to Law again, and he realized his mind was wandering down a really dumb track. Okay, he had better start a conversation.

"So, uh, a carnicería, huh. How long have you been doing that?"

"Three years."

"That's a pretty long time. Learn some Spanish there?"

"I already spoke it. Spanish and French, actually." Law cast a sidelong glance at him. "We can speak in it, if you prefer," he added in unwelcomely perfect French.

Oh shut the fuck up.

Sanji pressed his lips into a thin line as he asked in English, totally ignoring Law's statement, "How do you know Luffy?

"We had a class together."

Oh. So apparently Luffy roaming around campus like he belonged there wasn't a new thing. Sanji narrowed his eyes, turning to look at Law. "You know that Luffy isn't. Well, uh, he's never been..."

"A student?" Eyes that looked half dead momentarily glanced over at him. "Mmhmm, I learned shortly after."

The lines Sanji failed to realize had been forming on his forehead suddenly relaxed—he was actually a little relieved, because he wasn't looking forward to breaking the news of the truth about Luffy to this freakshow. "Uh, good. That's good. That misunderstanding has come up a couple of times before." More than a couple.

Law nodded. "Unfortunately for me, he'd already learned where I worked, so I could never really get rid of him after that."

Sanji inadvertently let a small laugh leave his throat—even this weirdo had been ensnared by Luffy's illogical tenacity toward food. He also realized this must've been the guy who Luffy had gotten all that meat from the very first time he'd visited this house—unless Luffy had a couple more butcher friends. Well, that wouldn't be surprising, either.

But the momentary reprieve from the uncomfortable feeling weighing down his chest vanished when Law soundlessly sidled up beside him, knife still clutched in his hand—the bloody knife, deftly gripped by hands that literally exhibited death.

Well, they pretty much screamed the word. All caps. DEATH! Jesus Christ. This guy was creepy as fuck.

Law brushed past him to put the knife in the sink and wash his hands. "I'll leave the rest to you, then."

"_Thank_ you," Sanji said, unintentionally being a bit more dickish than he'd intended.

He just decided to prepare a heaping amount of food, per usual, despite the fact that Usopp and Luffy were the only two people sitting at the table that he gave a shit about. Chopper was hiding in his room, and Nami was at her bartending job, and who the fuck cared where Zoro was. But he cooked enough for all of his roommates. Plenty for Penguin and Law, too.

When the food was ready, he had Luffy fetch Chopper and force him to come eat a meal outside of his room for a change, it was goddamn Friday night, after all.

Luffy ate a breathtaking amount, exclaiming through a full mouth, "Trafunkhouse always brings the best meat," as he noisily clapped Law on the shoulder several times.

Law pursed his lips together.

"Oh, speaking of which, Tralala," Luffy started, nudging Law in the ribcage hard enough to make the creepo lurch forward a little and narrow his eyes at Luffy. "Chopper's going to be a doctor, too."

Uh. How... how the fuck was that related? Sanji raised his eyebrows incrementally. Actually, nope, fuck that, he didn't want to know.

A fork crashed onto porcelain with an unreasonable clatter, and Sanji's neck snapped upward at the sound. It was from Chopper, who was suddenly staring wide-eyed at Law like he was some kind of goddamn movie star.

"Oh! You're going to be a doctor? Are you in premed now?" he asked animatedly, despite the fact that he had only said a few jittery words since he got to the table; he had been particularly skittish around the sketchy guests at their table. Go figure.

Law nodded slowly, and Sanji's gaze fell to the way he loosely clung to the fork in his hand as he spoke. "Mmhmm. I'll be graduating in spring."

"Really?" Chopper gawked at Law, his already large eyes impossibly wide with excitement. "I've barely met anyone in premed since I've been here. Almost all of my classes are math and sciences right now."

Law shifted his grip on his fork, sliding it between two fingers of his right hand—marked with an _A_ and a _T_—as he let the utensil gently settle onto the top of his plate. "Well, that's how it is for everyone the first year or so."

As a flurry of doctor-jargon flew out of Chopper's mouth, Sanji wearily rose to his feet and started to automatically clear the empty plates.

"Sanji, can you make me that one drink?" Luffy asked. It shouldn't have been enough for Sanji to know what he meant, but it actually was.

"I guess," he frowned; he was dead on his feet at this point and just kind of wanted to sleep. But hell, he was making Luffy a rum and coke with a twist of lime, might as well have a drink himself.

Might as well make sure everyone had a drink. Shit.

Whatever.

He didn't know _why_ he did shit like this, but it was like second-nature, like his body moved before he could even think about it—the curse of growing up in the service industry, probably. Even if he wasn't pleasant about it, he'd make sure their needs were met. He wished Nami was there.

Sanji made a round of cocktails and beers, served them up like he was a damned bartender or something—even making Chopper a sweet and fruity drink with just a hint of coconut rum, so slight he would barely taste it, although it would be more than enough to give him an enviable buzz.

Then he opened a bottle of wine for himself—Sutter Home, terrible stuff, but for three bucks a bottle, there was no reason not to pick up an entire case of disgusting sadness at a time—and after pouring an absurdly full glass, he returned to the table.

"Hmm, but it seems if you humanize the cadavers in that way, you won't be able to focus on the lesson," Law said.

Sanji's brow wrinkled. What the fuck kind of conversation did he just walk into? He took a very long swallow of his merlot. Yeah, it was as terrible as he remembered.

"But if you de-humanize—if you try to detach yourself from the people you're learning to save, then how can you call yourself a doctor?" Chopped replied emphatically. His impassioned tone was starkly opposite to Law's monotone.

Law raised a hand, gracefully twisting it with a mesmerizing aloofness. "If you want to call yourself a doctor, then why is it necessary to do one or the other? At some point, to heal and to help is to cut—shouldn't it be second nature to slice into human flesh like the steak you just ate?" He leaned an elbow on the table, haughtily resting his hand on his chin, and Chopper suddenly looked a little green.

How fucking gross. Fuck this guy. Food was food. People were people. There was a fucking difference.

His expression slowly formed into a scowl. Who the fuck would want this guy for a doctor, anyway?

Usopp's cell phone, which had been intermittently buzzing the entire time Sanji had been there, went off yet again as Sanji stood up to refill the glass that he'd finished before he meant to.

As Usopp shifted his position, wriggling the phone out of his pocket for the umpteenth time, Sanji could see he'd gotten a lengthy text message that took up a large portion of the screen. Usopp's brows twisted in concern; he was pretty shitty about covering up his expressions.

"Hey guys, I'm gonna head out for a bit," Usopp said, trying to make his voice sound natural and nonchalant, despite the ridiculously obvious furrow in his brow.

"You are?" Luffy said, his face falling a bit.

"Yeah, I'm, uh, I'm gonna go meet up with Nami," he explained. "I won't be too long."

"Oh, good, bring her here!"

"That's the plan," Usopp assured him. "It'll be a little bit, though."

"Everything okay?" Sanji asked lightly.

"Yeah, uh, no big deal. She's got to stay at work longer than she thought, but we'll come back here as soon as she's off."

"She? You have girls living here, too?" Penguin perked up.

"Uh, yeah," Usopp said. "Well, I mean, Nami's the only one."

"Ah, it must be nice to have female roommates," he sighed wistfully, resting his chin in his hands, with a dreamy smile on his face. Sanji momentarily entertained the idea of smashing it.

But then Luffy grabbed Law by the sleeve, yanking him hard enough to pull him sideways a few inches. "Oh, Trafalcon, I just remembered, I got that stuff we were talking about."

The stuff? That sounded questionable as hell, and maybe, just a little interesting. Sanji's eyes shifted between the two men with practiced disinterest.

Law glowered at him. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"The liquor you wanted," Luffy explained, loosening his grip, but not removing his hand.

Law's expression darkened. "I never said I _wanted_ that. I said I went through a phase where I drank a lot of it."

"If this is what I think, then no fucking way," Penguin started, shaking his head.

"I'm gonna go get the bottle," Luffy declared, standing with confidence.

"I didn't say I'd have any." Law gave him a serious look. "I don't even know why I'm here—I barely have any free time, I don't know how I let you convince me to come over."

"Come on, just one!"

Law raised his hand to his face, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. And then, with a sigh, he removed his hand, pointing his index finger at Luffy, giving him a refined tap in the center of his chest before he held the index finger straight up in the air.

"One."

It was a one. But all Sanji could see was that upside-down _T_.

Luffy clapped Law on his back cheerfully before he disappeared down the hallway. Sanji could actually hear his footsteps stomping down, and then up, the basement stairs. When he returned a moment later, he brandished an all-too-recognizable green bottle. Well. That was fucking disappointing.

It was just a goddamn bottle of Jägermeister.

Wordlessly, Sanji got up to fetch five shot glasses from the kitchen—because there was literally no way to mix it and make it even fractionally appealing.

Law poured the shots without letting a single drop get away from him.

Chopper regarded it like it was poison. "Is there something wrong with it?"

Sanji snorted. "Smell it."

The look on Chopper's face said it all, but before he could protest, everyone started clinking their shot glasses, and Chopper was too flustered and lost in the momentum to do anything but pour the murky black liquid down his throat.

Yep, that was fucking disgusting. Sanji swallowed, ignoring the burn, trying to ignore that fucking gross licorice flavor, and took a heavy drag from his cigarette.

Chopper nearly choked. Coughing, he chugged the rest of his sweet rum cocktail in the stead of a chaser.

The poor kid probably had a bad night in store how him, Sanji realized. Oh well, it was a rite of passage.

Sanji felt some vague comfort in Law's insistence that they would stop at one shot—but Luffy was a persuasive bastard, and even though Law acted like he barely tolerated Luffy, he buckled every time. So a second shot was poured. Then a third. Fuck.

"But there were _sharks _that day," Luffy was saying, and Sanji was pretty much chugging his merlot now, because it was sort of the same as drinking water after the Jäg.

"There was _one_ shark," Law corrected, his sigh laced with exasperation. He turned toward Chopper and Sanji—presumably Penguin must have already been familiar with this story, as he was mindlessly scrolling through something on his phone—and started to explain. "For most of the animals, the school could only get their hands on one or two of them, so the professors usually did the dissection so everyone got the benefit of seeing all of the pieces."

"Uh, what class did you say this was?" Sanji asked uneasily. He had thankfully managed to avoid any classes involving scalpels and formaldehyde.

"Zoology. The lab part of it."

"I wonder if I should take that," Chopper pondered aloud, with a slight slur. He leaned forward on the table, his eyes drooping a bit comically.

"Well, I'm going to be a surgeon, so I took any class I could with dissections, but it may not be that helpful to you," Law told him.

Sanji pressed his lips into a tight frown. He wondered how drunk he would get if he took a drink every time this tattoo freak mentioned cutting into dead things or something equally gruesome. Blackout, probably.

"Chopper should take it, shouldn't he, Traflailer?" Luffy burst in, leaning hard against Law, pushing him over a little. "It's a really cool class. We got to see the inside of an eyeball!"

Law aimed a disparaging look at Luffy. "Quit saying it like you actually took the class."

Sanji's gaze drifted from Luffy's shoulder rubbing up against Law's to the look of straight exasperation on Law's face.

Somewhere along the way, a fourth shot was poured, and Sanji took it and he didn't even know if he was tired or drunk anymore. His wine bottle was empty; maybe he'd open another one.

And goddammit, for some reason they were _still talking _about cutting into shit, too.

"But what about—I mean, what's that gonna be like, really sewing somebody up for the first time? I mean, not like an animal or something, like a real human being." Chopper's slur grew incrementally worse, and he slumped forward even further now, knobby elbows on the table, clearly struggling to hold his head upright.

Law shrugged, setting his hand down flat on the table. Sanji shifted uncomfortably as the word _DEATH_ seemed to be fucking directed toward him. "I think you're over-thinking it. When it comes up, you do it. I've never even thought about a reason to hesitate or feel weird about it."

"Huh, I don't kn—Wait, wait, but, hold on. You say it like—wait, have you actually done it?" Chopper asked, and words were clearly getting hard.

"I've had to a few times, yes."

"But how?" His eyes widened. "We're not allowed to. Not as premed students!"

"Haven't you ever seen Luffy's chest?" Law asked, his eyebrows raised just a little.

"No...?" Chopper replied slowly, sitting back in his seat.

"Oh, really?" Luffy cut in, plunking his glass down on the table. "Check it out!" And he pulled his shirt up to his collar bone, revealing an enormous scar across his chest.

Sanji stared at it from behind his drink, sipping it slowly. He'd noticed part of it peeking up from Luffy's collar a few times but had never asked about its origins.

Law smiled a little from under the brim of his stupid fucking hat. "That's my handiwork."

"Oh my god. You wouldn't be allowed in med school if someone found out you did that," Chopper cried out, gaping at Law like he'd just admitted to murdering a puppy or something.

Law shrugged. "If someone showed up on your doorstep at three in the morning and told you to fix them up, you might not have much of a choice. The police aren't exactly going to come banging down your door for it."

"Yeah, you really saved my neck that time, Trafickle," Luffy grinned, giving Law a small slap on the back of his shoulder.

Chopper asked several dozen rapid-fire and horribly jumbled questions about how Law had patched Luffy up, and why Luffy hadn't gone to see a real doctor, but Sanji started to tune out his younger roommate. Instead, his gaze shifted back and forth between Law and Luffy. It seemed a little weird that they were friends. But, maybe not, with Luffy being Luffy.

Most importantly, it was getting really fucking late. Like, way past the time that Nami usually got off work. Where the hell were Nami and Usopp? Shit, he should just go to bed—but no, no, he could just wait just a _little_ longer. He wanted Nami to taste his exquisite steak dinner, after all.

The group eventually relocated from the dining table to the couches just a few feet away. Chopper was lying face-down on the loveseat, presumably passed out. He'd held up pretty well, all things considered. He'd probably puke later. The rest of them were on the couches, but Sanji opted to sit on one of the barstools by the kitchen counter; easiest place to hover over an ashtray.

The ashtray was getting pretty full.

By the time Nami finally came home, with Usopp trailing behind her, it literally hurt to keep his eyes open. But the moment he saw her, Sanji quickly jumped to his feet, greeting her and informing he'd cook her dinner because they had _so much _steak.

"Uh, thanks, Sanji," she said, holding back a yawn. "But it's like two thirty in the morning, I don't think I can eat something like that right now."

"Oh. Yeah. Fucking duh, I'm an idiot," he said, trying to smile, but he was so fucking tired and _fucking obviously _she wouldn't want fifty pounds of steak just before going to bed.

"Make it for me tomorrow, though?" she smiled, and her smile gave him a surge of energy.

"You don't even need to ask."

"It was really good," Usopp added, waving goodnight as he and Nami headed off to bed.

The temporary influx of energy instantly faded as she disappeared from his sight. He smoked one more cigarette before he made the seemingly endless march up to his room, where he barely managed to kick off his shoes before passing out on the bed.

* * *

A muscular arm appeared from beneath a pile of tangled sheets, clumsily groping at a slightly banged up cell phone, until a fingertip finally hit the section of screen that would turn off the offensive alarm.

Zoro sat up and rubbed his eyes. Damn, definitely more tired than usual.

This middle-of-the-damn-night job really might not work out. It'd only been a week, though, so maybe it'd get easier. Even if it didn't, he sure as hell didn't have any other prospects.

Forcing himself out of bed, he lazily dug through a drawer until he'd produced enough clothes to consider himself dressed for the day. At least clothes were something he could keep uncomplicated. Sweats and track pants. T-shirts and sweatshirts. White socks, all the same type and generic off-brand, so he never had to match a pair.

Next, he gathered all the shit he was going to need for the day, loading up a gym bag and a backpack. Practice first, then a study group. He actually really wanted to skip the study group, though; the classmates he was meeting were kind of assholes to him, and he got the feeling they wished he wouldn't come, but fuck them and the stick up their asses, there was a test coming up and he needed to pass it. After that, he'd probably a nap for awhile before work.

His shift didn't even start until midnight.

But Zoro had to admit, he was actually sort of fortunate he'd found something so quickly, since his last job as a hotel valet had ended... abruptly.

He'd thought the valet thing would be easy. Drive a car a couple blocks away, walk back. When someone came to retrieve their car, walk over there again, drive it to the front, and hopefully get a tip out of the deal. What could be complicated about that? And the hours were good, too—late enough to not interfere with any of his classes, but they never kept him past ten unless there was some kind of event going on.

But beyond that, it, well, totally blew. In fact, it made Zoro feel like his entire life was supposed to be a stupid memorization game—like he didn't get enough of that with classes.

Remember what all these makes and models of cars look like (what the hell, he couldn't tell the difference between a BMW and a Mercedes to save his life), memorize where they were parked (if the hotel had just numbered the spaces, it would've made it easier to find shit, plus there were _two _different garages?!), make sure he knew where to drive and walk, and deal with all the busy roads that might be backed up if traffic was particularly horrific that night. And it was bad most nights, so even that two block drive could result in a slight detour if he couldn't get into the right lane in time.

But even if he hated the job, he hadn't wanted to _lose_ it. But one night—his _last _night there, as it turned out—he'd missed a turn, had to reroute, had to reroute again, some asshole cut him off when he tried to get into a turn lane, he'd maybe gotten a _little _turned around, and long story short, he'd taken twenty-five minutes to get some asshole's beamer back to the hotel.

He'd been fired on the spot.

So the new job... Shit-shift aside, restocking a toy store at night wasn't the worst gig out there. It was easy and didn't require a whole lot of thinking. No _memorization_. Besides, there were a lot of nights he was up till four or five a.m. anyway, and he needed money.

Why the hell was he thinking about all of this so early in the morning? Slinging his two heavy bags over his shoulder, he quietly exited his room and started heading down the stairs.

As he neared the bottom, he heard the familiar creak of the basement door opening. He preemptively turned his head in the direction the sound came from so he could greet Luffy, but to his surprise, that wasn't who he saw.

A tall man with dark, tossled hair clicked the basement door closed behind him. As his hand clutched the doorknob, Zoro noticed he had some kind of black shit all over his hands—tattoos? Yeah, they were. Some of them were letters too; but he didn't really care what they said.

The tall man turned around and looked at him, void of expression. He kind of looked like he hadn't slept in months.

Who the hell was this guy? And what was he doing in Luffy's room? Come to think of it, Zoro'd never even been down there.

"Good morning," the strange man said, nodding slightly.

"Uh, morning," Zoro replied.

Then the dark-haired man brushed past him and briskly headed for the front door, without saying another word.

Shrugging, Zoro let his gym bag and backpack tumble onto the couch before he headed into the kitchen to drink some water before he left. It would've been awkward to walk outside with that guy, anyway. He didn't feel like making small talk with anybody right now.

Once what he considered a safe stretch of time had passed, he picked up his bags and started to head toward campus. Other than practice, which was probably one of the few things he actually _liked _doing, his day was about as godawful as he'd expected.

His next day off of work was a Tuesday night.

Zoro didn't have to do anything after his afternoon class, so, as soon as he'd gotten home, he'd just sort of flopped onto one of the old couches, letting his backpack tumble onto the floor. He'd somehow managed to pull off a pretty decent grade on the test he'd been meeting with that annoying study group for, and he was feeling better than he had in awhile. Within a matter of minutes, he passed out.

He awoke to the front door slamming closed. A bit bleary-eyed, he rolled around to see it was Luffy. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen him for the past two days. Luffy smiled and waved hello, and Zoro noticed the old red sweatshirt he was wearing was torn in a few places and full of dirt. But that was maybe how it always looked—Luffy's clothes always looked like he'd pulled them out of the reject bin at a thrift store. Actually, he probably had.

He dozed off again, and the second time he woke up, it was Nami walking through the door. Almost before she was inside, Luffy, from somewhere behind Zoro—somewhere near the kitchen, sounded like—shouted his greeting to her.

"Hey, Nami! Welcome home! Hey, I'm going to a show tonight—do you wanna come?"

"Sure," Nami replied after considering Luffy's invitation for a few seconds.

Zoro sat up and looked over the back of the couch to see Luffy sitting at the kitchen bar, freshly showered and still dripping wet, eating all the leftovers from yesterday's dinner that probably all of them would've liked to have.

Luffy grinned. "Awesome. Lets go get Usopp and Sanji to go with us."

"You should probably hurry up and finish that before Sanji realizes you're eating all of it," Nami pointed out, and Luffy looked back down at his plate.

"Shit, you're right. Okay, two seconds." And he wasn't kidding. It took about two seconds for Luffy to shove all the food that was left—enough to feed a couple people, probably—into his mouth.

Luffy burped and Nami made a face and he left the dish in the sink, running to catch up with Nami, who was already walking upstairs.

Zoro watched them go and rubbed his eyes. He looked back at the television, which was turned on now. Luffy had been watching another alien documentary. What a surprise.

Zoro had seen more alien and UFO documentaries in the past month than he had in his life. He had no idea how many DVDs Luffy had, but so far, they were all about aliens, and it didn't seem like Luffy had even started coming close to exhausting his supply.

He wondered very, very briefly why Luffy would invite Nami to a show and not him, but then again, there was really no way Zoro would want to just go to a show with Luffy without knowing further details. He didn't necessarily like going out with everyone, but he'd wound up doing just that a few times now since he'd moved in with them. He wasn't sure how he kept finding himself in those situations.

After about twenty minutes—enough time for Zoro to grab a beer and watch some nut with round glasses and hair that looked like it'd just been vacuumed talk about aliens being held captive in the basement of the Pentagon or something—Luffy came downstairs with Nami and Usopp and Sanji in his wake.

"Zoro, look!" Luffy shouted, like Zoro wasn't already looking right at him. Luffy held his arms out and Zoro, hah, goddamn it, Zoro realized Luffy wasn't wearing his own clothes.

That had to be Sanji's grey button-down collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up the same way Sanji always wore his, and those were probably Usopp's black pants that looked like they actually fit Luffy, rather than the baggy and half-tattered shit Luffy usually wore. Those were Luffy's own fucking sandals, though.

"Nice sandals," Zoro said.

"He fought us on it," Usopp explained, hands going to his pockets.

"He wears the same size shoe as Usopp, even, but no, had to have the fucking sandals," Sanji sighed, looking Luffy down.

"We tried," Nami said, putting her hands on her hips. The three of them looked at Luffy like some kind of failed art project.

"I look incredible," Luffy said, hunched over a little, pulling out the bottom of his—Sanji's—shirt, checking himself out.

"You look dumb," Zoro said, taking a sip of his beer.

"I look fresh," Luffy said, leaning forward, "as _hell_." The tip of his tongue curled around his upper row of grinning teeth as he accentuated his point.

Zoro snorted. "Whatever you say."

"Usopp," Nami said, suddenly looking over at him.

"Yes?"

"You should shave."

Usopp grinned and rubbed his cheeks. He legitimately could grow a full beard. Zoro was a little impressed.

"I'm good," Usopp said.

"You should _shave_," Nami said again, and he only laughed. She grimaced and turned to Zoro. "Is that what you're wearing?" she asked, and Zoro glanced down to see exactly what he was wearing, because it was probably fine, and Nami could shut the hell up and worry about herself for once, he looked alright, and, wait—

"I wasn't planning on going," Zoro said, leaning back against the armrest of the couch as his other roommates began to advance on him.

"You are too going," Nami said, sitting down next to Zoro, right in his personal bubble. He leaned away from her.

"I'm going to stay here. You guys can have fun at your show." Zoro narrowed his eyes at her, and she was unaffected, per usual.

"There'll be lots of alcohol," Usopp pointed out. "It's at a bar, apparently."

"Yeah, your favorite place," Sanji said, grinning at him. Stupid, shit-eating grin.

"Just come with us, Zoro. Stop being such a Debbie-downer." Nami scrunched up her face, glaring, leaning even closer to him. Maybe she was trying to look intimidating.

Zoro sighed and rubbed his face. "Fine. Just shut up about it. And I'm wearing this, so shut up about that, too."

"Good," Nami said, standing up and rubbing the top of his head as she did, mussing up his hair, and he swatted her away. Well. It wasn't like she could really mess up his hair. He didn't actually have a hair style. It just… looked the way it did no matter what.

Once he'd rid himself of Nami, he glanced up and saw Luffy, his arms folded over his chest, smiling right at him, and Zoro paused. That fucker. Luffy knew things would play out this way, didn't he.

_That_ was how Luffy managed to convince him to go places. Fuck.

Zoro glared at Luffy, who just laughed, of course, and once Zoro was on his feet, he went to the fridge to grab another beer, because beer at his house was free—or at least paid for already—and beer at a bar was definitely not. After throwing away his empty can and cracking open a new one, he walked around the kitchen counter/bar and down the hall a bit. Everyone was crowding in Chopper's doorway. Zoro joined them, standing in the back, leaning against the hallway wall.

"Aw, come on, Chopper, you'll probably have a lot of fun," Nami was saying.

"The last _three times _you've taken me anywhere, it has been anything _but _fun," Chopper said emphatically from his room. "Not to mention we all have classes tomorrow, what are you guys thinking?"

"_Most_ nights are school nights," Usopp pointed out.

"Right. Sleep when you're dead," Sanji said, clapping Usopp on the shoulder, agreeing with him, and Chopper frowned.

"That's awful advice. Sleep is extremely important for brain function. And I have a class at eight o'clock!"

"Well, that's your dumb fault for having a class that early," Nami said. "But it's okay, everyone screws up and takes an early class their first semester in. You'll know better now."

"What? What's wrong with an early class?"

"You know," Zoro said from his spot in the back of the group, "this is at a bar. And it's not Nami's bar. You probably have to be twenty-one to get in. Chopper can't go unless he's hiding a fake ID with that fake prescription pad he has."

"I don't have a fake prescription pad!" Chopper shouted.

Ignoring him, Nami and Luffy turned to Zoro, and simultaneously said:

"I can get him in there."

"Oh, that's not a problem."

They were both overtly confident about it. Zoro's expression was blank, but he was inwardly amused. Yeah, between the two of them, sneaking in a seventeen year old was probably pretty small time. Even if that seventeen year old looked about twelve sometimes.

"I have an eight o'clock class and four chapters to read tonight, I _cannot go anywhere,_" Chopper said firmly. "I shouldn't even be talking to you all right now."

"Okay, Chopper," Luffy said suddenly, breaking free of the cluster and walking up to him and clapping him on the back. "Stay here tonight."

Chopper looked at him wide-eyed, momentarily at a loss. His freckled face almost looked a little crestfallen, maybe. "Um—I mean—"

"But you _have to_ come the next time, okay? It's not the same without you."

The tense expression on Chopper's face instantly relaxed. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" he snorted, uninterested—but as Luffy and the rest of the group went to filter back out to the kitchen, Zoro noticed Chopper's face was scrunched up like he was trying to suppress a smile.

He was like a little kid.

Luffy convinced them to do a few shots together to kill a little time, because the show didn't start for a little while, still, and Zoro didn't know what kind of show was happening at whatever bar they were going to, but in the end, it didn't really matter. He wasn't going for the music.

"What kind of bar is this?" Usopp asked, coughing a little after swallowing a mouthful of some sort of honey whiskey.

"A really fun one. There's always a lot of dancing. Plus, my friend's going to be in this show—that's why I'm going." Luffy spun on his stool, rotating in a slow circle as he spoke.

"Your friend's in this show? Is he a musician? What instrument does he play?" Usopp asked.

"He's not a musician—he doesn't play an instrument, really," Luffy replied.

"So is he like a DJ?" Sanji asked, pouring another shot into his glass and immediately down his throat after that.

"No, he isn't—"

"Well who cares," Nami cut in, pushing her shot glass towards the center of the counter. "We all look really good—except, mostly just me—and alright, we're ready, let's get going already."

The ride there didn't take too long. They'd all assumed their usual spots in Usopp's car—with Nami in the front, and him and Sanji on either side of the middle row of seats, and Luffy sitting in the back. Zoro bickered with Sanji, and Usopp and Nami laughed, and Luffy waved at people in the cars behind them from the third row rear-facing seat.

Luffy gave them decent directions. They'd only had to turn around once.

When they arrived, Sanji pressed his face against the window, squinting up at the neon sign above the entrance.

"The show is at Ivankov's?" Sanji asked, frowning.

"Yeah!" Luffy said, leaning over the back seat, inviting himself into Sanji's personal space.

"This is a gay bar," he said, and Luffy grinned.

"I know that."

"You're taking us to a drag show," Sanji deadpanned, already digging for his cigarettes.

"So you've been to one here before? Good, so you know—they're _awesome_," Luffy was climbing into the middle seat between Sanji and Zoro, prompting Zoro to open the door and get out of the car just to make room.

The rest of his roommates exited the station wagon, checking their pockets for their wallets and IDs and money or whatever. Sanji was last to get out of the car, and he lit a cigarette by the time he was standing up straight.

Before they were barely through the front door—Sanji smoked his cigarette in the minute and a half it took to get there—Luffy was swept into a spinning hug that took him right off his feet.

Immediately, Luffy was laughing as a very tall, lanky man wrapped his arms around Luffy, shouting with a sandpapery voice, "School Boy! You came! I waited for you!" He set him down, and Luffy wobbled a little. "And you brought friends!"

Zoro usually didn't notice clothes, but it was kind of impossible to miss this guy's outfit. He was wearing this sparkly purple blazer with matching pants that fit him more like a second skin than actual clothing. He had tons of these weird, fancy-looking embellishments laced and hanging all over him, too.

The sharp stiletto heels this guy was wearing made him tower over Zoro.

"Yeah, they all live with me," Luffy said with a proudness that made Zoro feel like Luffy had fathered them all.

"Did they dress you, too?" guy with makeup and a bowl cut asked.

"Yeah!" Luffy spread his arms, and bowl cut whistled above the loud music.

"I see they couldn't budge you on the sandals, though."

"Hell no!" Luffy grinned, and the guy started cracking up, and Luffy turned to the rest of them. "Guys, this is my friend, Bon Clay. He's hosting the show tonight."

Zoro and Nami and Sanji and Usopp sort of stared for a second, unprepared for this.

"School Boy, your friends seem kind of quiet," Bon Clay pointed out, laughing at the expressions on their faces, a hand on his hip, looking down his thin nose at them. He was a little freakishly tall. His blush and his lipstick were intense.

"They're just _really_ excited. They've never been to a drag show before," Luffy explained with enthusiasm.

"That one has," Bon Clay pointed right at Sanji, whose mouth fell open a little, his eyes narrowing. "I recognize him. Forgot his name."

Luffy laughed, and Zoro did too, for that matter, from the look on Sanji's face, and before Zoro could jump on this opportunity to heckle the fuck out of him, Bon Clay invited them to the bar for a few rounds, and Zoro sure as hell wasn't going to miss out on that.

Bon Clay bought the entire group three rounds of shots in fifteen minutes, and Zoro didn't know Luffy's friend very well, but he liked him well enough after he said that anything they wanted, they could put on his tab.

Zoro and Nami had glanced at each other when he said that.

"These guys can drink a lot!" Luffy had laughed, like he was warning him, which was fair, and Bon Clay had given them a thumbs-up.

"Drink as much as you can! I'm good friends with the owner of this place! You all are honored guests here."

Okay. This Bon Clay character was a pretty alright guy.

The atmosphere of the place wasn't… awful. Well, it was terrible, but it could be worse. The bar was almost more like a club. Lots of neon lights. There was a large dance floor, and there were actually two bars—one outside on the big patio, and the one Zoro was currently sitting at, and the place was pretty packed, and everyone was… having a great time.

"Shit, what time is it?" Bon Clay suddenly asked, and Luffy lost his phone, so he didn't know, and it was Nami who informed him of the time, to which he replied, "Fuck. I have to go, the show is starting in ten minutes and this asshole has my heels that I need and if that son of a bitch thinks she can wear them all night—listen, friends! Enjoy the show! I'll be back for you!"

And like a tornado—or maybe there was just a lot of twirling involved—Bon Clay was off, rushing to find whoever had his shoes. Because the ones he already had on weren't… the right ones. Apparently. Zoro was pretty sure that's what'd just happened.

It didn't take long for Nami to order another drink for herself and Usopp and yank him onto the dance floor—Luffy followed close behind them—and Sanji disappeared too, which left Zoro alone at the bar, which was totally fine by him. He wasn't much of a dancer, and this wasn't necessarily his scene, but he could sit back and drink free drinks and watch people dressed in mainly tight clothes and glitter dance and laugh together without complaining about it.

The show started a little late, but Bon Clay ran onto the stage, miles above everyone else in his giant platform heels, and he gained the full attention and support of the entire room immediately. Already, there was cheering and clapping, and Bon Clay laughed and made his introductions between professions of love for the crowd and his friends.

He was a pretty decent host, really. It felt like he was some sort of leader. It was weird.

When the show itself started, Zoro ordered himself another drink and sat back in his barstool, watching with mild interest.

At first, he assumed the whole thing was stupid. Really intense lip-syncing, what the hell? It was stupid, and decently weird. Were they even singing at all, or just moving their mouths? But—it was funny, he couldn't help it—the more he watched, the more he found himself smiling.

Zoro scanned the dance floor, picking out his roommates easy enough with Usopp's giant afro-ponytail. Usopp and Luffy were cheering and grabbing and shaking each other by the shoulders and elbows, extremely impressed and pointing and jumping up and down and bending over backwards when they saw a particularly… energetic dance move on stage. The people around them were behaving no differently, really.

And beside them, Zoro saw Nami next to Sanji, who'd apparently reappeared from whatever shadowy corner he'd gone to hide in. They were backlit by blue and yellow rotating stage lights. Nami had a drink in one hand and the other on Sanji's shoulder, pulling him down a little. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest and she on the balls of her feet. She was saying something in his ear, her face hidden by his hair a bit.

And then he'd straightened up, and he was laughing, Zoro could see Sanji's grinning face and his shoulders shaking a little, and he leaned down again, hands cupped around his mouth and her ear, and he said something that made her smile.

Zoro finished his drink and ordered another. He went back to watching the show.

Bon Clay made it back to the bar before his roommates did.

"Where are your friends, Green-haired Boy?" Bon Clay asked casually, ordering a cocktail, crossing one leg over the other as he sat next to Zoro.

"My name is Zoro," he corrected him.

Bon Clay snorted. "Sure it is, Green-haired Boy. And my name's Bon Clay. Anyway, why aren't you dancing and getting all sweaty with everyone else?"

"My name _really is_ Zoro."

"Would you rather me call you Chia Pet?"

"_No_."

"So shut up about it! My question still stands."

Zoro shifted in his seat, looking out at the crowd of people coating the dance floor. "I'm not much of a dancer."

"Too bad. Well, we can't all be good at everything," Bon Clay said with a shrug, sipping his cocktail through two skinny straws.

"Why do you call Luffy 'School Boy'?" Zoro asked suddenly, looking over at Bon Clay, who looked right back at him. He was wearing a lot of makeup. "You know he isn't a student, right?"

Bon Clay laughed with his crass voice that didn't go with his makeup or his outfit at all, but he seemed to embrace it all the same. "I've known him since he was a teenager. Back when I met him, he'd just dropped out of high school. So I called him School Boy after I found that out. He… Anyway, I wasn't planning on making friends with some scrawny little baby-faced teenage kid, but here we are, years later."

Zoro studied Bon Clay for a second, taking in what he'd just said. This oddball, who was definitely older—although Zoro literally couldn't tell _how_ old he was, he couldn't even guess—had known Luffy longer than all of them had.

"You two don't seem like you'd have much in common," Zoro said, wondering for a split second if maybe that was too blunt.

Bon Clay raised his eyebrows and smiled around his straws just a little, and he looked back at the dancers up on the stage who danced and posed and lip-synced with all their might.

"We have more in common than you would think," Bon Clay said, and he took several sips through his neon straws.

Zoro wasn't sure what Bon Clay meant by that, but rather than press the matter, he asked, "So how'd you meet him?"

"Work, I guess," Bon Clay said, stirring the ice in his drink. "I was a different person when I first met him. I wasn't Bon Clay. But School Boy helped me out, and he was with me through a lot of important things." Bon Clay grinned openly at the stage and the performers. "He taught me one of the most important life lessons there is."

"And what was that?"

Bon Clay looked back at Zoro, eyes sweeping over his face. "You look like a pretty miserable guy, Green-haired Boy, so I'll tell you."

Zoro's jaw set. This guy may be Luffy's good friend from however-many years ago, but he sure as hell didn't know jack shit about Zoro.

"School Boy taught me how important it is to let yourself be happy. That it's okay to do what you love and to be happy. And don't get me wrong—School Boy isn't the most articulate of people, but he teaches his lessons all the same."

Zoro snorted.

"You see those beautiful people up on that stage?" Bon Clay asked, grabbing Zoro's jaw and turning it towards the stage, and Zoro shoved his hand away but looked all the same.

"It's hard _not_ to see them," Zoro pointed out.

"They have it figured out more than you do, Green-haired Boy."

Zoro scowled at Bon Clay. He was getting fucking tired of this shit.

"What are you so _stressed_ about?" Bon Clay prompted, seeing the look on Zoro's face.

Zoro paused. He held his breath for a few seconds. And then he deflated a little and took a long drink of his beer before he finally said, "A lot of things."

"If you died tomorrow, would you be satisfied?"

Zoro almost wanted to laugh. "No."

He didn't know why he admitted it. He didn't even know this weirdo. But maybe that was why.

"Well," Bon Clay said, standing up. "Figure that out. I have a show to host—watch closely! These people know what it's about! It's free to be happy, Green-haired Boy. Try it out."

And Bon Clay was gone and Zoro was alone again.

He turned his eyes back on the stage, because he'd lost sight of everyone else again, and watching the performers up there stomping around in impossible-looking heels and twirling and throwing themselves to the ground, looking like they really fucking were singing the song, they were so on point—it was… something.

Zoro wanted to give absolutely no weight to the words of advice that tall-ass nut-job Bon Clay had left him with—but, shit. He was feeling it, just a little.

So, whatever, Zoro was miserable—but he had a plan. It was turning out to be a very difficult plan, and he wasn't really doing as well as he'd hoped he would when he'd mapped out his life path years ago, but, it was still a solid plan.

It was better to put in the shitty years to come out ahead eventually, so at least he'd have something to show for it all.

He looked at the stage. Looked at Bon Clay.

Why didn't any of them seem to share that sentiment?

Zoro considered his beer and all the things that were most important to him in life. He took a long drink.

He slid from his barstool, beer still in hand, and he went to go find his roommates.

Bon Clay was on stage, announcing finalists or maybe even winners, Zoro didn't even know—but everyone was on the dance floor, crowded together in a confined, sweaty space, fucking pushing on him, but he was bigger than most of them, and he knew he'd find everyone around there somewhere.

It didn't take long.

"Zoro!" Luffy shouted suddenly, and Nami and Usopp were there too, standing on the tips of their toes, hands on each other's shoulders for balance, paying close attention to the outcome of whatever Bon Clay was saying.

"Hey," Zoro said, and before he could say anything else, Luffy hopped a bit and slung an arm around Zoro's shoulder.

"Bon Clay's going to say the winners! You're just in time," Luffy said, and he threw his other arm around Nami, standing as tall as he could with her, trying to see over the crowd, and Zoro actually hunched over a little so Luffy could use him as a proper support rather than hanging on his neck.

When Bon Clay said some name that sounded like ice cream for strippers, the people around them went nuts, and Luffy and Nami and Usopp were all equally emotionally involved at this point, and they exploded right along with the crowd, and Zoro was lost, but he drank his beer to the winner anyway.

Music started again, blasting out at a familiar tempo, and like some kind of weird glitter-based magic, everyone around them started dancing. Zoro untangled himself from Luffy's grip, and he turned, looking to escape for at least a minute. He was willing to try the whole fuck-it-enjoy-yourself thing, but this was a bit much.

Before he could slip away, he felt a hand curl around the crook of his arm, and he looked down.

"Where are you going?" Nami shouted up at him over the music.

"Somewhere I can breathe!" he shouted back, using his beer to gesture at everyone around him.

"Take me with you!" Nami replied, although she was the one who led him towards the back patio. Once they were outside and the cold air was hitting them like a fucking blessing, Nami pointed towards the back wall. "There's another bar over there. So. Let's do some shots."

"Lead the way," Zoro said, feeling a wave of unexpected relief.

Nami ordered them both shots of Patrón because they were drinking on someone else's tab tonight, and why not treat themselves, she'd said, because they worked hard and they deserved it, and Zoro kind of agreed a little. He certainly didn't feel guilty. He and Nami had that in common. He liked that about her.

She ordered them a couple Long Islands as well, and they stood by the bar and drank and Zoro actually laughed a few times because Nami was actually kind of funny when she wanted to be.

"Aren't you driving Usopp's car home?" Zoro asked.

"Nah. He's driving home tonight. I made him stop drinking earlier. I always drive his stupid car home. You know—you could drive it home one night. Like. Contribute." Nami smiled at him from behind her cocktail. "Well. He probably wouldn't let you either way."

"Probably not. He loves that piece of shit. And I can't really drive a stick."

"Weren't you a valet? How is that even possible?"

"That question wasn't on the application."

She rolled her eyes. "Literally none of you idiots can drive a manual. What the hell! What if something happens, and Usopp and I are rendered incapable of driving for whatever reason, and you had to drive his car to save all of our lives—what _then_, Zoro?"

"We… would all die?" Zoro raised his eyebrows slightly. "Or at least, we'd stall a lot."

Nami snorted. "You're so useless. At least Usopp fixes shit. And Sanji cooks. And Chopper is a doctor."

"What about Luffy?"

"I dunno, he has all those DVDs," Nami pointed out.

Zoro considered the new shots being placed in front of them. "Five hundred alien documentaries—that's being useful?"

"Okay, you're both worthless, whatever."

Nami held up her shot glass and Zoro clinked his against hers.

"Fair," he said with a smile, and fuck, relaxing a little wasn't so bad all the time, maybe. They downed their shots and returned to their Long Islands.

Still smiling, Zoro brought his drink that'd been poured with an incredibly friendly and heavy hand to his lips. The bartender was being _very nice_ to him and not Nami so much, which was actually almost a little surreal on top of being entertaining as hell. He spun on the barstool and thoughtlessly scanned the people standing around outside under the strung christmas lights that hung over the patio in cross-sections, and he nearly choked on his drink. He swallowed hard and coughed.

Because there was fucking Sanji, Zoro knew that blond mop of hair anywhere, and the stupid asshole was leaned up against one of the stretches of wooden fence that encircled the back patio, way off to the side, and he was talking to some _guy_, and he wasn't yelling or starting a fight or anything—he was… Zoro laughed a little.

"What're you laughing at? You never laugh this much, I feel very funny tonight," Nami said as she spun her stool around and followed his eyes. She paused.

She knew the look on Sanji's face just as well as Zoro did. They both easily recognized the way he was looking at this guy, this guy who was obviously a guy and not a man dressed in woman's clothing—some skinny brunette fuck in a flannel shirt, a _flannel shirt_, who was stirring his drink with his straw and laughing at whatever Sanji was saying around his cigarette. With that stupid fucking smile on his face.

"Do you want to go back inside?" Nami asked.

Zoro raised his eyebrows and looked down at her. "You think I'm surprised?"

For the first time Zoro had ever witnessed, Nami didn't seem to know what to say.

"He trips over himself every time he sees a pretty girl. He sleeps with literally anyone. He loves anyone who _looks_ at him. So this doesn't really surprise me." Zoro took another long drink and cleared his throat, turning slowly towards the bar again.

Nami spun her barstool along with him, and they ordered refills.

Zoro wasn't normally this… open, and he knew that was why Nami was being quiet, but he was a little drunk. And. And he didn't care.

He took a deep breath.

Nami looked at him, and she almost looked worried, which was a little funny.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said, rubbing his mouth. "Just—the whole thing is pretty funny. And that guy, Luffy's friend, that Bon Clay guy, made me feel like... I don't know. Maybe I need to lighten the fuck up."

Nami smiled at him.

"Let's go find Luffy and your girlfriend," Zoro said, standing up and stretching a little, almost spilling his drink in the process.

"Ideally he kept an eye on Luffy and didn't lose him already," Nami said, and Zoro snorted because losing Luffy was absolutely a possibility.

When they found the both of them, Nami was proud of Usopp for being so sober _and_ for hanging onto Luffy for so long. Usopp was pretty proud of himself, also, which was fair, because that was a tough task.

They stayed another hour or two, Zoro didn't know, but he kept drinking, and Nami actually kept pace with him all night, hanging around him, sometimes going to get the both of them refills when they reached the bottoms of their high ball glasses without saying anything about it, and Zoro thought briefly to himself at one point that Nami was a good friend to have.

When the collective decided it was time to go home and pass out—primarily led by Usopp, who had to get up in a few hours to go work at his coffee place—it was Nami who announced she'd go find Sanji. Zoro hadn't seen that dumb asshole for the rest of the night, which was absolutely fine by him.

Although, when Nami returned, she was alone. She shrugged, unable to locate that fucking idiot—Zoro assumed she'd gone to the back patio, because where else would Sanji be, if not inside with the rest of them—and she pulled out her phone.

Luffy went to find Bon Clay to say goodbye, and Usopp followed him because that was the smart thing to do in this situation.

"It's too loud in here to call him—I'm going out front," Nami shouted up at Zoro, and he followed her outside.

They actually found Sanji standing outside the front of the bar, leaned up against the brick wall, smoking a cigarette and typing something into his phone.

"Sanji, we were looking for you!" Nami said, like she was scolding him, and he immediately looked up at the sound of her approaching voice.

"Were you? Fuck, sorry—I just came out here to get away for a minute. You know. Breathe."

Funny he said that with smoke in his lungs. Funny he said that at all.

Sanji turned his head to exhale a fat cloud away from Nami's face, and his expression was all apologies, and she gave him a hard time, but she smiled after a minute. Sanji never even looked at Zoro, his eyes glued to her.

His hair was kind of a mess, and the bottom button of his shirt was undone. He took a long drag of his cigarette, burning away what was left while Nami sent Usopp a text to inform him that they'd found their dumbass roommate.

As the group walked back to Usopp's station wagon, dragging their heels and slumping their shoulders, Sanji hung back a little, walking next to Zoro.

"Did you have a good time tonight, fuck face?" he asked casually, hands in his pockets as they wavered down the sidewalk.

"Could've been worse," Zoro said, remembering the conversations and the drinks he'd had.

"That bartender outside on the patio looked like he enjoyed serving you," Sanji said, his eyes on Usopp and Nami and Luffy several feet in front of them. Luffy and Nami were hanging onto each of Usopp's arms, wobbling and pulling him in opposite directions, and he was doing his best to muscle their weight, but fuck, Luffy and Nami were almost as big as he was, and they couldn't weigh much less.

Zoro snorted at Sanji's comment despite himself, and Sanji looked over at him for a few seconds and smiled a little.

It wasn't until they got to Usopp's car that Zoro even really thought about what Sanji had just said to him.

On the ride home, Luffy squeezed in the front seat with Nami and Usopp, sitting right in front of the gearshift and taking control of the radio. Zoro didn't care what they listened to—anything was refreshing after listening to the standard deafening club beat for the past couple hours.

Zoro glanced over at Sanji only once. He was leaned up against the window, chewing away on the corner of his bottom lip, his eyes unfocused and cast down towards his own hands threaded together in his lap.

* * *

"Chopper!"

Nami had originally chalked Chopper's name up to the odd coincidence that every tenant in that boarding house had a weird name. But apparently, it was his last name. He didn't have a strange first name at all, so she wondered why he didn't just go by that. But, to be honest, Chopper suited him better than Tony did.

She knocked on his door even harder.

"Chopper, open up!"

Just as she was about to kick down the fricking door, it flew open, and Chopper was looking at her like he was ready for her to tell him the house was on fire, or that he was late for a class, or something equally horrifying. Well, to Chopper, her news would most likely be on par with all that.

Nami stepped into his room without being expressly invited, and Zoro and Usopp slipped in behind her. She'd brought reinforcements for this.

"Chopper," she began, smiling at him, her fingers threading together behind her back, "I just wanted to let you know—"

"Know what?" Chopper interrupted, apprehensive, like he was on guard already, standing in his own bedroom doorway.

"We're having a party," Nami finished, rocking forward and back on her heels a little. Usopp leaned against Chopper's desk and Zoro sat on Chopper's bed.

"A party?"

"Yep, that's what I said."

"Here? When?"

Usopp cleared his throat, looking around Chopper's room, which was jam-packed with stuffed bookshelves and unpacked boxes. "About an hour, maybe," he said.

"Are you serious? Why are we having a party? Why didn't anyone tell me until now?"

"We decided to have it on a whim," Nami explained. "It's a Halloween party! We figured it'd be better to just have our own party instead of trying to find the right one."

"Okay, well, count me out, because—"

"Nah, you're coming," Zoro said from Chopper's bed, hands resting on the mattress. Chopper looked positively affronted. Zoro was unfazed.

"But today isn't even Halloween. Halloween's on Wednesday."

"Well, yeah," Nami said, drifting towards Chopper's closet, "but it's the weekend before Halloween, so really, it's the same thing. Today is Halloween in all reality."

"I have a test on Wednesday…" Chopper said, mostly to himself, by the look of it, his eyes and voice trailing towards the floor.

"All the more reason to have a party here, tonight!" Nami said, trying to be encouraging.

"I can't, Nami, you guys, I have to stay focused—"

"If you don't hang out with us," Zoro said, his voice lazy and deep like it almost always was, "then Usopp here will take the door off your room."

"I have the technology," Usopp promised.

Chopper stared at them, looking absolutely defeated, and god, it was a little sad, yeah, but it was also _so rewarding_. Nami was very confident that Chopper would thank them for being such good friends some day.

"And you have to wear a costume," she added.

"I don't _have_ a costume," Chopper said just as Nami pulled open the door to his closet and dug around a little. It took her a matter of a few seconds to produce a lab coat. Perfect.

"I knew you'd have one of these. Here," she said, walking over to Chopper and more or less forcing him to put it on. "There! Look, you're a doctor now. I mean, yes, you're already a doctor, but now you really _look _like a doctor."

"I'm not a doctor."

"I bet you have a stethoscope in here somewhere, don't you," Usopp said, suddenly looking around, twisting to survey the desk he was still leaning against, picking up random loose papers like he'd find medical equipment hiding under them.

"I do. And it's in the bottom drawer, in its case thingy, and I—you guys—it's really nice that you're including me, but I'm serious, I should really study. And I have a paper to write. A really, really long paper." Chopper gave them what looked like the most resolute expression he could manage, and he started to shrug off his lab coat.

It was in that moment that Luffy popped in, leaning in Chopper's doorway on his way to the stairwell. Or the kitchen. Kitchen made more sense.

"Hey, Chopper!" Luffy said, slicing through the atmosphere that was blanketing the bedroom.

Chopper turned and looked at Luffy, pausing mid coat removal.

"Shut up and celebrate Halloween with your friends!"

Chopper frowned at Luffy, and then, in a small display of relinquishing the metaphorical wheel, he sighed and pulled the lab coat back onto his shoulders. Luffy grinned, and Nami could see Chopper smiling back, just a little, as Usopp slung the stethoscope around his neck and patted him on the back so hard that he stumbled forward.

"Oh! Also, Usopp! You have paints, right?" Luffy said, his mind derailing to a different track entirely.

Nami didn't know why Usopp would have paints. But.

"Yeah?" Usopp paused, being cautious, which was wise. "Why?"

"Are they paints that can go on your skin?"

Usopp paused again for a completely different reason. "Uh… yes. Well, probably, yes."

"Will you do me a favor?"

Nami watched Usopp narrow his eyes just a little as he answered, "Probably not."

"I need help with my Halloween costume."

Nami left Chopper in the hands of her roommates and went upstairs to prepare her own costume. She stood in the middle of her room, looking around with her hands on her hips. And then, making a quick decision, she yanked the sheets off her bed and shimmied out of her clothes, wrapping said bedsheets around herself and tying them in knots in a few choice locations. There. Perfect.

When she walked across the hall and into Usopp's room, never breaking her stride as she opened the door and entered, she came upon Zoro and Chopper sitting on Usopp's bed with Usopp himself sitting on the floor in front of Luffy, both of them with their legs crossed, and Usopp was laughing so hard that he was actually almost crying.

He had a large paintbrush in hand, and he was painting Luffy's face green, just straight bright traffic light green, and Zoro was trying not to snort into the tallboy he'd grabbed from somewhere, and Chopper was holding his own face, attempting to muffle his giggling.

Luffy turned to look at Nami, his grin looking extra white in contrast against the green, and Nami put a hand over her mouth.

"I look great, right?" Luffy asked her, his bangs and all the hair around his ears pulled up into a little ponytail that bounced on the top of his head.

"Uhm," Nami said, trying to keep a straight face, "Yeah. You look. Great—what are you?"

"I'm an alien," Luffy said, like it was fucking obvious.

"He wanted this," Usopp said, calming down a little, laughter still speckling his speech, and he grabbed Luffy's chin and turned his head back to face him again. "Hold still, I'm not done."

Luffy contained himself as much as he could handle, by the look of it, and closed his eyes and curled his lips inwards, probably like Usopp had instructed him to before Nami arrived to witness this ridiculous scene, and she stood there and watched as Usopp dragged his big paintbrush straight down Luffy's face and immediately started cracking up, like he was totally losing it, all over again.

"Are we gonna do your neck and arms, too?" Usopp asked, pushing Luffy's hair back more to fill in green along his hairline. He clearly didn't really care too much if he got paint in Luffy's messy black perma-bedhead.

"Oh, definitely," Luffy answered, tilting his head back.

"Good." Usopp bit his tongue while he tried to stay serious and steady enough to get all the spots under Luffy's chin.

"And what're you supposed to be?" Zoro asked Nami from his spot on Usopp's bed in between sips of his beer.

"Um," Nami looked down at her bed sheet ensemble. "I'm a Greek goddess."

Usopp snorted. "You look homeless."

Nami held her arms out a little. "A sexy ghost?"

"I might buy that," he said, moving onto Luffy's left arm. They were doing a decent job of not making a huge mess. Usopp apparently had the foresight to lay down newspaper to protect the shitty hardwood flooring. Because Luffy clearly didn't think of it.

"Sexy ghost it is, then," she said, squeezing between Zoro and Chopper on Usopp's bed.

"I might buy that if I was piss drunk and going blind," Zoro said, and Nami punched him on the shoulder, and he smiled just a bit.

"Aren't you going to put on a costume? People will be here in, like. Two seconds," she asked him, fiddling with the knots in her bed sheets.

"I _am_ in my costume."

Nami and Chopper both looked at what Zoro was wearing. And he was wearing what he wore five days out of the week—a white sleeveless undershirt and fucking sweatpants.

"God, you're so lame," Nami sighed. "I'm not even going to ask who you're supposed to be because it's going to be so stupid, I know it."

Zoro smiled again and took another drink of his beer.

"Where's Sanji?" Chopper asked, pulling his legs up onto Usopp's mattress. He'd put on more respectable-looking trousers and almost really did look like an actual child doctor. Shit, Chopper was so cute, fuck.

"Work, I think," Zoro said, leaning back a little.

"Did anyone tell him we're having a party?"

Chopper had a very valid question, and when Nami saw Zoro pause mid-drink, and Usopp halt mid-brushstroke, and Luffy freeze mid-squirm, she knew the answer.

"Whoops," she said quietly, and then, after a quick thought, she shrugged. "He'll find out when he gets home. This will just be… Sanji's surprise Halloween party that we're throwing for him."

"I like it," Zoro said, surprisingly supportive for once.

"Me too," Luffy said, grinning at her in all-green, and Nami finally laughed at his stupid face.

"Okay," Usopp cut in, and he put his paintbrush down on the newspaper. "I'm done. You're an alien."

Luffy jumped up and rushed to bathroom where there was a full-size mirror hanging on the door, and Nami could hear him shouting about how incredible he looked from down the hall.

He reappeared seconds later, hanging in the doorframe of Usopp's bedroom, and Nami saw Usopp start to open his mouth and attempt to stop Luffy from putting his freshly green hands on the white wood of the frame, but it was too late.

"I look so _good_, Usopp, thank you," Luffy said, an image of jubilance.

Usopp forced a smile and nodded. "You're welcome."

"Alright, okay," Luffy said, pulling out the little ponytail on top of his head, "I think some of my friends are about to be here in a minute. So. Should we get alcohol? Do we have alcohol? Should I go get some more? I'm gonna—here, I'm going to run to the store and buy more and you guys get everything ready and I'll meet you back here."

Before any of them could protest or respond in any way whatsoever, Luffy was off, and they listened to him bound down the stairs and slam the front door shut on his way out.

It was obvious that the four silent tenants sitting in that room were all unanimously imagining a green Luffy barreling down the streets on his Vespa and perusing the liquor aisles of a grocery store.

"So what're you going to be, Usopp?" Nami asked, breaking the few seconds of silence that'd passed between them all.

"Oh—heh, I actually put thought into this. Gimme a minute," Usopp said, hauling himself to his feet, and he slowly pulled the thick black ponytail holder from his hair on his way to his desk, scrunching his eyes shut as he freed all his curls, and he slid his hairband onto his wrist as he reached upwards to muss up his hair with one hand, pulling open a desk drawer and removing a hair pick from it with the other, and he put the pick between his teeth so he could fully dedicate both hands to teasing and working the curly mess on his head. Without a word, he walked right out of the room, pick still in his mouth.

Nami and Chopper and Zoro all looked at each other, sharing a mutual loss for explanations.

Usopp returned not five minutes later, his hair fluffed into a slightly messy afro, and he had on one of Sanji's collared button-up shirts, and he was rolling up one of the sleeves.

Nami and Chopper and Zoro waited for their due explanation.

Usopp had his old shirt that he'd been wearing minutes ago slung over the crook of his arm, and he dropped it thoughtlessly on the bedroom floor, and he rolled up the other sleeve of Sanji's pale blue shirt—Nami knew it was Sanji's because she'd seen him wear it, and because Usopp didn't own anything like that, and it was very slightly too tight on him, but—

"Alright," Usopp said as he bent over and picked up his paintbrush and palate, which had a lot of green on it now. "Check it out." He held up the brush and gave them the cheesiest of grins. "I'm Bob Ross."

Nami and Zoro both actually laughed, like stupid, unwilling, snorting laughter that they almost felt guilty about.

"Who's Bob Ross?" Chopper asked, still totally lost.

"Happy trees," Zoro said, and honestly, that was a better explanation than Nami could've given.

"I… see." Maybe Bob Ross was before Chopper's time.

"He was a painter on television way back in the day," Usopp explained. "He was a great man."

"Is that why you've been growing out that heinous beard?" Nami asked.

"Yes."

"So you're getting rid of it after Halloween," she continued.

"Absolutely."

"Thank god," she said, relieved.

Before Usopp could get properly offended by her disapproval of his gross beard, there was a loud knock on their front door.

The four of them shared the same look: Here we go.

It took less than an hour for their giant common area downstairs to be totally filled with costumed bodies.

Luffy knew a lot of people.

A fresh drink in her hand, Nami sat with Usopp on the winding stairs next to the kitchen, looking out over the swelling sea of people in their home. They'd already lost track of Luffy, but across the room, they could see Zoro introducing Chopper to several pretty girls, and Zoro and Nami and Usopp were all laughing at Chopper's heated face and general floundering.

God, it was so nice to see Zoro in a good fucking mood for once. He was _totally likable _when he wasn't busy being angry and miserable.

When people had first started showing up, Nami had felt a bit… overwhelmed. And she could tell her roommates shared her sudden apprehension. People were filing through her door in a steady stream, and one person had brought very large speakers, and his friends were carrying in electronic turntables and a synthesizer, and he was saying he was a DJ, which, everyone and their brothers were DJs these days, so Nami wasn't impressed, but the music had started and god, there were so many people so suddenly.

But then Luffy had gotten back with multiple bags filled with clinking glass bottles and Nami and Zoro and Usopp had all been visibly relieved. Chopper didn't look any better. But time would change that.

Luffy seemed to know most of the people there, or at least half of the people there, which was saying a lot. He hadn't wasted any time in opening several of the bottles he'd brought home, and he'd also purchased, like, two hundred plastic solo cups, which was shockingly thoughtful of him, Nami was impressed, and Luffy made sure they all had full drinks in their hands before he started introducing them to a huge wave of people. Nami had forgotten just about everyone's name almost immediately.

Not on purpose. Just. There were _a lot_ of people.

Nami took a long drink of her vodka cocktail that she'd thrown together—there was pineapple juice and mango juice in the fridge, so she mixed together some pretty tasty drinks for Chopper and Usopp and herself. She glanced at Usopp's drink. He'd actually been outpacing her, but that wasn't surprising. He had that whole anxiety thing going on. She knew Usopp well enough at that point. His liquor would catch up to him and he'd slow way down before too long.

She was surprised at how many people had turned up on such short notice. Even Trampstamp Law had shown up with his gloomy face and goofy friends. Luffy had been ecstatic, darting over to him as soon as he walked in the door, pointing to his green face and holding out his green arms—which, his hands weren't very green anymore, and there were spots where he'd touched his face and rubbed off the paint, and that reminded Nami—

"Hey, Usopp," she said above the music, and he looked over at her. "Why do you have a bunch of paints and all that art stuff?"

"I like to do art," he responded, and Nami paused. Like. Well, obviously, you freaking dork.

"Are you any good?"

"Eh, kinda. Sometimes. Sometimes I have good days and I'm like, 'holy shit, Usopp, look at this thing you did.' But mostly I'm not that great."

Nami smiled a little. "You make a good Bob Ross. C'mon—let's go mingle."

She rose to her feet and Usopp stood with her, and she linked her arm around his so as not to lose him like they'd already lost Luffy, and with drinks in hand, they dove in.

There was a lot of dancing, which Nami was a big fan of, and she danced her way around the house with Usopp in tow, and the more they looked around, the more they kept bringing their drinks to their mouths.

Their house was getting fucked up.

Nami saw a hole in the wall. And Usopp pointed out that it looked and kinda smelled like part of their couch had maybe caught fire for a minute? And oh, fuck, Nami spotted a guy hanging on the fridge door, like he had it open, and he was hanging on it, and, goddamn it, Nami and Usopp watched as the door to their fridge came right off, detaching completely from the rest of the appliance.

Nami and Usopp both screamed a little, and they rushed over, and after Nami swatted the guy away, both she and Usopp were able to combine their strength and get the fridge door back on its hinge, and they high-fived so hard at their success that Nami's hand felt like it was on fire. It stung for a good several minutes. And they went back to drinking.

Eventually, Usopp spotted Zoro and Chopper, and they reunited by the coffee table. Chopper spilled his drink on himself a little as he ducked out of the way when some some drunk stranger tipped their tall standing lamp over. Chopper looked at the lamp on the floor for a moment. And then he looked back up at Nami.

"There's a lot of people here," he said, his freckled cheeks and ears totally red, and he was squinting his eyes a little. "I've met a lot of people. Where were you guys? Did you—did you see that Law is here? Law is here, I'm going to go find him in a minute because. I have something that I need to talk to him about."

Chopper swayed on his feet just a little, and Nami and Usopp grinned at him.

"We're ready to find Law whenever you are, Chopper," Nami told him, and he looked a little surprised.

"Really? Oh. I expected… some kind of fight. For some reason. Okay! Alright, I'm going to find Law, and you guys can come with me? Where's Luffy? Is he still here?" Chopper was rambling a little and god, Nami took a deep breath, because he was so horribly adorable.

As Chopper was starting to turn in order to lead them on a search to find Law for whatever reason, because Chopper had some important doctor things to discuss with him, apparently, they all stopped because they were very suddenly interrupted.

Sanji, a drink in both hands, stumbled up on them, still dressed in his chef's uniform from work.

"Oh, hey!" he said, looking a little flustered. And maybe a little drunk?

"Hi, Sanji!" Usopp shouted, looking genuinely excited to see him, and, hah, Usopp was starting to feel it, wasn't he.

"Hello! Also, I didn't know we were having a party?" Sanji had a cigarette tucked behind his ear, and he almost spilled one of his drinks as a total stranger clapped him on the shoulder, physically rattling him, complimenting him on his great chef costume.

"Yeah," Nami said, and Sanji looked back at her. She went on, "It's a surprise Halloween party for you. Happy Halloween!"

"Aw, this is your party? This is a great party! Happy Halloween, man!" the stranger said in congratulations to Sanji, who ignored him completely.

Sanji stared at Nami with totally exhausted and glassy eyes all for a matter of a second or two before cracking into a smile. "You're the most thoughtful friend I have," he said, looking like he might melt, and Nami laughed. What a trooper.

Zoro snorted and their stranger-friend slipped back into the flowing current of the crowd and Sanji gave Zoro a once-over.

"What're you supposed to be?" Sanji asked, sipping one of his two drinks.

"Bruce Lee," Zoro answered.

"That's the dumbest… god, I hate you," Sanji said, wrinkling his nose.

"John McClane in Die Hard?" Zoro asked.

"That's worse. Bruce Willis is a fuck."

"Wolverine."

Sanji rolled his eyes and took several long gulps from one of his solo cups, and Nami leaned on Usopp while she watched the two of them actually not scream at each other. How heartwarming.

"I'm Rocky Balboa in that one scene," Zoro continued. "I'm, uh… I'm Sigourney Weaver in Alien."

Sanji actually smiled a little at that.

"I'm Vin Diesel in every role he's ever had."

"Stop," Sanji said, finishing a drink and leaving the empty cup on the coffee table, right next to fifty other empty cups and bottles and cans. "You're ruining my surprise Halloween party."

"Are we going to talk to Law or not!" Chopper shouted suddenly, standing on the balls of his feet, trying to gain some ground.

"Why do you want to find that creep?" Sanji asked over the music, and Chopper looked offended.

"What the hell are you talking about! He's really cool! He's—he's so knowledgeable and he has some really interesting opinions about some things, and—"

"And you sound like you have a boner for him," Zoro said, and Chopper dropped his jaw and his drink on the ground.

"I— I definitely _do not _have an—a —" Chopper was sputtering as he squatted down to pick up his empty plastic cup, trying to scoop up the melty ice that'd gone everywhere, and he was a straight mess.

"Chopper," Nami said, patting the top of his head, and he squinted up at her. "Zoro is teasing you. Calm down. We know you guys both like to doctor out together. It's fine. Just—just leave the cup, Chopper, it's alright. We'll clean this shit up tomorrow."

"Speaking of which," Sanji began as Chopper stood up, the knees of his doctor-trousers all wet from kneeling on the ground where he'd just spilled his own drink. Sanji took another several gulps from his remaining beverage and looked around the room full of people stumbling and dancing and being general train wrecks from behind his cup. He swallowed and chewed on his bottom lip a bit as he said, "Our house is getting _fucked up._"

"I know," Nami said, grimacing.

"Our landlord's going to kill us. Our neighbors will hate us." Usopp had both hands around his little red cup, and he looked absolutely hilarious, standing there and worrying while he was dressed up like Bob Ross.

"He's not going to kill us." Zoro snorted, and the group turned their heads towards him. Upon seeing their faces, he went on to inform them that, "The landlord's in the back yard with Luffy smoking a joint right now. I saw them earlier. He's been here for about an hour, probably."

There was a communal pause. And then Nami glanced at the back door that led out to the overgrown backyard with the shitty concrete 'patio' and walkway.

"Oh. That's… I'm going to go find them," she said, and she didn't bother with waiting on the rest of them—she pushed past Zoro and started making her way towards the kitchen.

Usopp was quick to follow suit. "I'm going too," he said, dipping out along with her with zero hesitation.

And it was only a second before they heard Sanji say, "Have fun with Doctor Feelgood," to Zoro, and he caught up to them before they were lost to the crowd.

Zoro could hang out with Chopper while he and Law got all medical with each other. That was fine. Also a little funny.

Sanji and Nami and Usopp managed to stick together and get through the back yard, and they didn't even have to search.

"Hey guys!" Luffy shouted, jumping up off the … couch?

"Has there always been a couch out here?" Usopp asked as Luffy approached, voicing the exact same thought Nami was having.

"No! Actually, Brook and I brought it over from his house. Like twenty minutes ago. We thought it'd be nice to have out here. Isn't it awesome? He has a lot of furniture," Luffy explained.

"You two brought it over?" Sanji asked, and Nami knew he was wondering how the hell a living relic like Brook could hold up one end of a big couch, but Brook seemingly wasn't thinking about that at all.

"I have more furniture from every decade than I even know what to do with!" Brook said from the couch, and Zoro was right, their landlord had the fattest joint Nami had ever seen in between his skinny fingers, and she went right over and sat down next to him.

Once she was next to him, she realized that his entire face was painted like a skull. Not like a sugar skull, but like a realistic skeleton; it was incredible, Nami didn't know how he'd done that with just face paint or makeup or whatever he'd used, and she gaped at him.

He started cracking up, that old cackle she'd heard before, as soon as he noticed her staring.

"You look pretty nuts," Sanji said as he lit a cigarette, taking a seat with Usopp on the concrete ground in front of the red couch. It looked like it was red, anyway, but it was hard to tell with how dark it was outside. Luffy perched on an armrest.

"Ah, thank you! I just put this together last minute."

It was the most incredible last minute bullshit Nami had ever seen. He looked like a walking skeleton in a suit with an afro. It was unbelievable.

"By the way!" Brook said, and Nami looked over at him, and she couldn't get over how thin he was. And how wide his smile was. "This is a great party!" He held the joint out to her and Nami's grin almost matched his.

"Thanks, Brook. We just put it together pretty last minute." Nami winked and Brook laughed and she took the joint and put it between her lips. She glanced down at her feet to see Usopp laughing to himself, shaking his head, and she took a moment to think about how she was on the exact same page as he was right then.

So that was how Nami and Usopp and Sanji ended up smoking weed with their landlord while Luffy paced around, talking to them and gesticulating wildly about aliens and UFO's and shit that none of them cared about normally, but were actually very entertained by at that particular time.

When the joint and all their drinks were finished, and Usopp was laying flat on his back against the concrete, and Sanji had somehow lost his lighter in the dark, Brook stood and spun the thin cane he'd made part of his costume. Or maybe he always had a cane with him. Nami couldn't remember.

"Well!" he said, smiling at all of them. Sanji and Usopp and Nami all looked up at him, totally stuck in their seats. "I think it's time to go enjoy more of this party."

Luffy was on board, and he made it to the door before Brook did, and they left Nami and Sanji and Usopp alone in the back yard.

Sanji was the first to stand, and he held out his hand for Nami, who absolutely needed it to get out of that couch. He pulled her to her feet, and she stretched, feeling a little spinny, and a lot thirsty, and yeah, she needed to find another drink. She and Sanji looked down at Usopp.

"Get up, we're going inside," Sanji commanded, nudging Usopp with the toe of his shoe.

"No, I'm afraid to see the damage," Usopp groaned, making zero effort to get up.

"We'll go do some shots," Nami said, like that'd fix the destruction of their home, and she and Sanji squatted down and grabbed Usopp by each arm, yanking him upwards, forcing him to stand.

"I'm already drunk," Usopp mumbled, rubbing his face once his was upright. "And I'm high. Should I drink more? I guess I probably should. It's Halloween. And I'm Bob Ross."

"Yes you are," Sanji said, pushing on his back, and they steered Usopp inside and towards the kitchen.

Once inside, they squinted against the light, staring out at the downstairs level of their house, momentarily forgetting what they were doing once they saw all the people still dancing and shouting and spilling things everywhere.

"Sanji! Usopp, Nami! Hey!" Chopper said suddenly, rushing up to them, nearly plowing into Usopp. They focused their attention on their youngest roommate, bracing themselves for an emergency, but no, heh, Chopper was just drunk and extremely excited to see them after being separated for half an hour.

Zoro approached after Chopper, looking over for a second before turning back to the group. "Dude, that doctor guy, Trampoline or whatever Law, is fucking _weird_."

"I know!" Sanji shouted, ignoring Chopper's immediate loud disagreeing.

"_You're_ weird!" Chopper yelled at Zoro, one hand balled into a fist and the other clenched around a can of beer that Zoro had probably given him.

"You really are," Sanji said, agreeing with Chopper.

Zoro smiled a little at both of them. "This coming from the twelve-year-old boy genius and Monsieur Jerks-Off-To-The-Food-Network."

"Listen," Nami interrupted, and she pointed between her and Usopp. "We are the only two normal people in this house. The rest of you are all weird. I promise. You're all weird dorks."

"Aw!" Sanji looked wounded. "Nami, how could you _say that?_"

Nami had every intention of responding, but before she could, Sanji's attention turned suddenly to a very large guy dressed up like a viking who approached in a flurry and had grabbed Sanji by his shoulders, big palms clapped around them, shaking him.

"Oh my god, it's you!" the stranger shouted right in Sanji's face, looking totally ecstatic to have found Nami's clearly confused roommate.

"Oh my god, it's me," Sanji said, his eyes wide, already trying to reclaim his personal bubble, but the guy wouldn't let go of him.

"You're Sanji!" big guy said, and the more Nami looked at him, the more she realized he looked… like an ugly version of Sanji, oh shit, he almost had the same blond hair, and his facial hair was like a shittier version of Sanji's goatee, oh god, this was too funny already.

Sanji's mouth was hanging open, his eyes wide and eyebrows pursed together.

"I just had to apologize to you, Sanji. I have to apologize, because I fucking hated you, okay, I hated you, but thanks to you, I'm just—you saved me, Sanji. I should have never hated you. I shouldn't have judged you."

"I…" Sanji began as he pried himself from this guy's grip, "have no idea who you are."

The guy's face fell a little. "You don't?"

"No clue."

"We've had classes together for years. We even went to the same high school! I was so pissed when I found out you were a student at Sabaody. Same major, even." Sanji's bizarre doppleganger held his arms out while he explained himself. "You were better than me at everything, and you were a fucking asshole about it, and you sound stupid as hell when you talk, but—"

"But?" Sanji asked, his eyebrows raised and his wording clipped short.

"But thanks to you, I'm not going to fail Corporate Information Technology. And I need to pass that class." The guy really did look genuinely grateful.

"What?" Sanji was still at a total loss, by the look on his face. Nami glanced at her other roommates, who were all tuned into the conversation at this point. Surely they'd noticed Sanji being super confused by his ugly viking reflection.

"That test we had? Just recently? The one that was worth, like, a huge chunk of our grade?"

Sanji narrowed his eyes. "Yeah?"

"I was so far behind in that class, I knew I was going to fail—I didn't even go to that class that day, I didn't even _take_ that test."

Sanji's curled his lips inwards, waiting for this guy to keep talking.

"You must've forgotten to put your name on that test. There had to be some kind of mix-up, because the professor just scribbled my name on the test and took off five points for forgetting."

Nami put a hand over her mouth for the second time that evening, watching Sanji over her fingers. Still, he said nothing.

"He must not've been paying attention. And you know he doesn't take attendance. So."

Sanji put a cigarette in his mouth, and Nami could see it in his eyes: the moment he remembered he'd lost his lighter outside.

"What's your name?" Sanji asked, his voice tight and barely controlled.

"You can call me Duval."

"Duval… what a stupid fucking name," Nami heard Sanji say a little quietly, and Duval leaned forward.

"What'd you say?" Duval asked over the music. "Sorry, your accent or whatever that is—"

"I said, do you have a lighter?" Sanji said loudly, yanking the cigarette out of his mouth.

"Oh— nah, I don't smoke."

Sanji nodded slowly, rolling the cigarette back and forth between his thumb and index finger. "How would the teacher fuck up that hard?"

"I dunno, dude, we kinda look alike."

Sanji looked like he was about to throw up. "We look nothing alike."

"We kinda do."

It was at this point that Zoro burst out laughing, and Nami and Usopp and Chopper all looked over at him, and they were all trying not to laugh, but now Zoro was making it really, _really_ difficult.

"I had to retake that test," Sanji said slowly.

"He _let_ you?!" Duval looked stunned.

"I had to argue with that fuckwit for twenty minutes that he'd lost my test before he agreed. He took off fifteen percent for taking it late. I would've had a perfect grade otherwise."

"I know! You got a perfect grade the first time! Well, you would have, if you would've remembered to put your name on it. Heh. Anyway, I wonder whose house this is? It is getting _fucked up_." Duval was looking around, his nose scrunched up a little.

It was about then that Nami noticed Sanji had put his cigarette back into the pack, and the pack itself was safe in his pocket, and his hands were clenched into very tight fists.

Zoro must've seen it at the same time Nami did, or even a little before that, because he suddenly stepped in between Sanji and Duval, and he _threw his arm_ _over Sanji's shoulders_ like they were best fucking friends, and that alone fucked Sanji up enough that he didn't throw the sucker punch they all knew was coming.

"Hey, Chef Ramsey, lets, uh, go out front and find a lighter," Zoro said, and Sanji was fucking _sputtering_.

Zoro steered Sanji away, pushing him in the direction of the front door, and Duval looked a little lost. Nami and Usopp and Chopper went to follow Sanji and Zoro, and Usopp patted Duval on the back a couple times on his way out.

After about five steps, Sanji shoved Zoro away from him, and he was about to explode, like openly freak out, but Usopp and Nami filled in the space on either side of him, trying to calm him down, and it didn't help that they were all laughing openly now, and if Nami hadn't been hanging on Sanji's arm, she was pretty sure he would've turned right around and smashed Duval's face in.

When they made it to the front porch, they found Luffy out there with Law, who happened to have a lighter that Sanji could use and maybe Sanji disliked him slightly less after that. Law hadn't bothered to wear a costume. He also had green paint all over the front of his shirt. Which was funny.

"Guys, I'm glad you're all out here," Luffy said, a drink in his left hand, pointing at all of them. "I was thinking about how I look way better when I'm painted, like everyone at the grocery store when I was buying liquor earlier thought I looked _very cool_, so going on that—I think we should paint the house. It's our house, you know? It's a little run-down looking. We should paint it."

What an understatement.

"That's a lot of work," Usopp said, hands in his pockets.

"Is that my shirt?" Sanji asked suddenly, taking a long drag off his cigarette.

"It is. Also, Luffy, paint is expensive, and I don't know about you, but I'm really poor." Usopp crossed his hands over his chest and leaned against the railing that outlined the front porch. And then he seemed to remember the integrity of the house in general and thought better of it, standing up straight again.

"Ah, yeah, there's that. I did just spend a lot of money on alcohol. Alcohol is expensive, by the way, what the hell!" Luffy said, and they all remembered at the same time that they never did manage to get themselves refills on their drinks before Duval happened.

"I have a solution," Usopp said, looking at the front door. "I'll be back in a few minutes. I will meet you all out here. In a few minutes. Someone get more drinks."

And with that, he went back inside. For whatever reason.

Chopper actually volunteered to get everyone drinks, because it was a pain in the ass to navigate through so may people inside, and this surprised everyone, but maybe Chopper was starting to enjoy the whole hammered drunk thing. Zoro went with him, and Nami and Sanji sat with Luffy and Law.

Law's friends showed up and ended up pulling him back inside, which Luffy looked a little annoyed over until Usopp reappeared with his arms full of tubes of acrylic paint and a couple paintbrushes and that palate of his.

"We're going to paint?" Luffy asked, totally distracted, and Usopp spread everything out on the porch.

"Obviously. Well, I am. You're not."

Zoro and Chopper came back, a few bottles in their arms, and several plastic cups stacked on top of each other.

"It was easier to just bring bottles and cups out here than carrying however-many full drinks," Chopper explained, sitting down on the concrete porch steps.

"You just brought straight liquor?" Nami asked, squinting in the dark at what they'd brought back.

"I found a two-liter of Coke," Zoro said, and Nami rolled her eyes. Gross.

They all mixed drinks for themselves—nothing really went well with Coke, but, whatever—and Usopp stood in front of the door.

"You're going to paint the door?" Chopper asked, his eyebrows raised. "Won't our landlord be mad?"

"He won't care," Sanji said, lighting another cigarette already.

"What color will it be?" Luffy asked, excited over the whole thing.

"It'll be a few colors," Usopp said after taking a few long drinks of his very strong cocktail. He made a face, Nami could smell his drink, and she laughed a little.

She didn't know what he had in mind, but she stood next to him, holding her cell phone up as a light for him while he painted straight onto their front door. Luffy and the rest of their roommates sat on the front porch, watching and drinking and talking. Usopp would pause every few minutes when someone opened the door from inside to leave or come out and smoke a cigarette.

The weather was really nice out, for the end of October.

After maybe twenty or thirty minutes, Usopp stepped back, finished, trying not to get paint on Sanji's shirt, but god, he was drunk, Nami could see it in his posture.

"Damn, Usopp!" Luffy shouted, jumping to his feet.

Usopp had painted a big lion's head on their front door. He'd used orange and yellow and white and red and the colors ran together in places, and it looked a little cartoony, but it was cute, with its big spiky mane and goofy smile. It was wonderful.

Nami grinned. "Holy shit, Usopp," she said, putting her elbow up on his shoulder, leaning on him. "Look at this thing you did! I didn't know you were so talented."

Usopp laughed. "Talent is a pursued interest. In other words, anything that you're willing to practice, you can do."

"Fucking deep," Sanji said, snorting, sitting on the ground with the rest of them, leaned up against the railing with his ankles crossed.

"Bob Ross said that," Usopp smiled.

"Are we going to name it?" Luffy asked, getting closer, and he grabbed Nami's cell phone from her so he could shine the light on the door himself. It really did look pretty cool. Nami snatched her phone back after a few seconds.

"What, name the door?" Chopper asked, standing up next to Luffy, looking equally impressed.

"The lion! Or, the house itself! We all live here. We can't just call it 'house.' It's more than that." Luffy was grinning, his face still fairly green in spots. "I've never been able to live in a big house with all my friends before. It makes sense to name it."

"What're we gonna name it?" Chopper seemed immediately supportive of the idea.

"Bear! Polar Bear! Or. Lion." Luffy rambled off suggestions super-quick.

"No," Nami said helpfully.

"Tiger! Wolf! Lion."

"We can't name our house Lion, Luffy," Chopper said, looking back at the door.

"Boss Lionel," Zoro said, and Sanji burst out laughing. Zoro glared at him.

"Squid! Octopus! Chimpanzee!"

"No!"

"It looks like a sunflower," Sanji said, rubbing his eyes.

Luffy put his hands on his hips, joining Chopper in staring down the bright smiling lion on their front door. After a few seconds, he suggested, "The Thousand Sunny."

There was a lag as everyone suddenly considered this.

"Where'd 'Thousand' come from?"

"I'unno. Sounded cool."

Well. There were worse names out there.

Luffy grinned hard at the apparent lack of disapproval.

"Alright," he said, taking a sip of his drink. "The Thousand Sunny."

They kept drinking, and eventually they all went inside and danced and shouted and laughed along with everyone else until nearly dawn. Usopp and Chopper went out to the backyard to throw up together, and they both passed out on the red couch outside. Luffy disappeared into his room in the basement at some point, growing abruptly tired out of nowhere. Sanji and Zoro and Nami all kicked out as many people as they could, but settled on letting strangers and friends pass out on their couches and loveseats and the floor in the common area of the first floor.

Sanji eventually reached his limit and trudged up the stairs, his chef's uniform hanging off him and his hair a frizzy mess, dark circles under his bloodshot eyes.

Nami and Zoro sat together on the concrete stairs of the front porch in front of the big smiling lion, drinking their umpteenth cocktail and watching the sun come up. They both wore jackets and said very little.

"I wonder if our neighbors will complain about the front door," Nami mused, her elbows on her knees, fingers wrapped around her drink and the ends of her jacket sleeves.

"I think most of our neighbors were here tonight," Zoro said, looking down the cul-de-sac.

Nami smiled just a little. "Figures."

After another stretch of silence, Zoro said slowly, "Tonight wasn't so bad. I mean. Other than… all our shit getting fucked up. And a bunch of strangers passed out on the floor inside."

"We'll worry about that later," Nami sighed, almost wanting to laugh. Her eyes rose to the horizon line, focusing on nothing with Zoro. "It was nice to see you being happy tonight."

"Thanks, Mom."

"I'm just saying. Normally you don't come off as being very happy. So it was nice seeing you enjoy yourself for once."

Zoro took a sip of his dark cocktail and said nothing.

* * *

It was getting a little hard to suppress his excitement. Today was going to be a really super class. Franky leaned back in his chair, impatiently flipping through pages of a robotics journal that he wasn't really taking in as a dozen or so students rushed around the lab, making last-minute adjustments to their robots.

About thirty minutes before his class officially began, he decided it was time for him to change locations. Rising to his feet, he tried to conceal his eagerness as he scribbled big, bold letters on the white board:

MID-TERM EVALUATIONS ON THE ROOF.

He pressed his lips together, barely containing his smile. He'd been watching everyone tinker away at their projects for the last several weeks, but now it was time for the test-run. Well, the first really official rest run. And it was a gorgeous day outside—really warm for the last day of October. A great day to play with some super robots.

"Alright, guys," he called out, clapping his hands together. "I'm gonna go open up the doors to the roof. I'll see you all up there soon."

"Hey, um, real quick," Usopp, one of his students, called out to him, waving a hand to get his attention.

"What is it?"

"Do you have anything smaller than a triple-zero in this?" he asked, holding up a small JIS-type screwdriver. "That's the smallest I've got in my kit, but I'm having a hard time with this one screw..."

"Oh, sure, I've got every size you could ever possibly need," Franky assured, quickly walking over to a cabinet at the far end of the lab. He'd amassed an impressive collection of tools for the department and created drawers and expanding storage to keep it organized to perfection. He proudly yanked out a drawer with over forty micro-sized screwdrivers, all lined up by size and type.

"Wow, I'm impressed," Usopp said, bringing a hang to his chin as he stared at the collection, wide-eyed.

"Yeah, pretty great, right?" Franky grinned at his student's reaction, setting a hand on his hip. "Use whatever you need, just be sure to put it back."

"Will do. Thanks."

Humming to himself, Franky made his way to the stairwell that led to the roof of the science and engineering building, stopping by a Coke machine.

He could hear a lecture from a nearby classroom over the clink of the quarters he was stuffing in the machine slot. After hesitating briefly, he spun on his heel and lingered towards the open classroom door and stood next to it. He winced at the sound of the seal on his bottle breaking as he unscrewed the cap.

"... The camel gun was another formidable weapon, which originated in Egypt and was later used in India, Persia and elsewhere. As you can see here, the camel gun was a very literal name for it, as the cannon itself was designed to rest of the back of a camel."

Oh, was a super interesting topic—he inched a little closer, until he could see inside. At the front of the room stood Professor Nico Robin, next to a projection screen.

He wondered what the topic of the lecture was—ancient weapons, or warfare, maybe. Wow, he kind of wanted to hear more.

"The Persians began to call the camel gun the zamburak, which translates to 'little wasp'—which was actually a quite fitting epithet for how it was viewed on the battlefield by the enemy. Typically, these zamburak were used to fire from a range too far for the enemy to retaliate. Although the damage was seldom critical, it was a tremendous nuisance."

Yeah, he remembered reading a bunch of articles on the zamburak—although he was mostly interested in the various designs and modifications of it. Franky always felt super inspired reading about the evolution of weapons technology. Without these early inventions, things like the gatling gun and the tank would've never been invented.

"In a way, the camel was the original tank," Professor Robin continued, and he widened his eyes in surprise—he sort've felt like she'd read his mind for a second. "In addition to the zamburak, camels were encased in armor and used to charged into battle."

Robin clicked over to the next picture of an armored camel, charging into a gruesome battle.

"The camels look kind of cute in it, don't you think?" The corner of her lip curved upward, ever so slightly.

After listening for a few moments, he realized he'd gotten a little too immersed in the topic—he needed to go open the door to the roof, since class was starting in—yikes, less then twenty minutes now. Taking a swig of the Coke, he took one last look into her classroom.

Professor Robin's eyes met his for a brief moment.

Whoops. He'd been spotted.

The mid-term evaluations were fantastic. Man, he had some great students—they'd started some projects he was really proud of, and had come up with ideas he'd never even imagined.

One young woman in particular had made a really cool robot that shot projectiles using pressurized air, using only solar energy for power. Totally awe-inspiring. When she'd first pitched it to him, Franky had told her he wasn't sure if it was going to work with the materials and time she had available, but she'd somehow figured out a way.

In testing it, they discovered that while it was generating enough energy, its control still needed some work. One of the projectiles she was using—those little toy wooden blocks kids played with, which apparently her family had a ton of at home because she had a lot of younger siblings—accidentally got shot forward a little too far and flew off the edge of the roof.

Franky, along with a couple of students, ran to the edge of the rooftop, searching for it.

"Oh, there it is!" a student yelled, pointing, just as it hit the ground. The block slammed against the cement, rolling harmlessly across the ground. It stopped several feet away from a woman who Franky recognized as one of the faculty. The woman jumped back in alarm, but she hadn't actually been in any danger of being hit. Like, by the time the block got close to her, it was barely tumbling.

"Sorry about that!" Franky called out, his booming voice easily carrying across school grounds. The faculty woman looked up at him, although she was too far away for him to read her expression. He waved at her disarmingly. "We'll come pick it up later!"

Then he hadn't given it much more thought—other than thinking, whew, at least they hadn't shot it to the side of the building where there was a parking lot. It would've been bad if it'd broken a car windshield or something—but maybe not _that _bad, because he actually knew how to replace a car windshield, although he'd have to buy the replacement out of pocket.

Finally, class was concluded. Franky locked up the door to the roof, and headed back to the lab with a little bit of a spring in his step. Robotics class evaluations always got him so pumped.

He hadn't taken any notes, but he remembered all the details of what everyone had presented, the area for improvement and the marks he'd decided each of his students deserved. Man, they had all made amazing progress in less than two months!

And this was only the halfway point—the final products at the end of the semester were going to be totally out of the park, he was sure of it. He logged into the school terminal and started adding in the grades for the project, as well as his comments. He'd promised everyone he'd have his feedback and their grades entered in by the end of the day.

The bots were worth 40% of their total grade—a pretty significant portion—with the remaining 60% of their grades being from three written tests. The class had already taken test one of three, and the scores had been all across the board, but if everyone kept doing as well as they had today, he bet the entire class would wind up passing.

Franky couldn't _wait_ to see the completed bots in December.

Just as Franky finished entering the last student's grade, he was surprised when the head of the engineering department popped into his classroom, wearing a grim expression on his face.

Franky raised his eyebrows, waiting for the Department Head to say something.

"I'm going to need you to come with me to the main faculty office, Professor," he said finally, not even bothering with a greeting.

"Uh, sure thing. Is everything okay?" Franky asked.

When he received no reply, his stomach sank.

Two hours later, Franky sat inside of his car, hands tightly clenching the steering wheel as he tried to calm his careening mind.

As it turned out, the woman from the faculty who'd seen the block fall had _not_ considered the experience harmless. In fact, she had reported that the "dangerous projectile" had been "mere inches" from hitting her, and if she hadn't jumped out of the way, she'd have been "sitting in a hospital bed at this very moment."

Meanwhile, his student's bot had been seized and inspected, and just ten minutes ago, Franky had been asked to take a leave of absence while their investigation was pending.

"_You can't have your students creating weapons, Franky. What the heck were you thinking? You're lucky we didn't get the police involved."_

Dean Garp's words repeated in his head over and over again.

He squeezed the steering wheel even tighter. His student hadn't been trying to make a _weapon_—she'd been testing force and pressure that could be applied to a mechanism utilizing only energy from the sun.

Sucking in a labored breath, he finally willed himself to turn the key and crank the ignition. The key ring felt painfully barren without the key to the lab attached to it.

The key to _his _lab.

He drove home and didn't really know what to do with himself, so he tinkered with the Halloween costume he planned on wearing that night. It was pretty much done, but hey, with a little extra time, he could probably make it even cooler than it already was.

He had a huge bucket of candy ready, because he knew there were a ton of kids living in his apartment complex and the office had handed out these little paper pictures of pumpkins to put on the door for tenants who welcomed trick-or-treaters, since it wasn't like the apartments had porch lights. So Franky put it up, and fixed up his costume, and finally at around five o'clock, kids started knocking on the door, holding up big plastic pumpkin buckets and pillow cases and plastic bags with pictures of black cats and ghosts and skeletons.

Franky was dressed up like Frankenstein, with a big green rubber mask and bolts on his neck. Of course, he'd fixed the mask to make the bolts a bit more realistic, and to make them snap a little with electricity when he pushed on a tiny switch he kept cupped in the palm of his hand—only a slight shock, nothing that'd hurt him, probably, not that he planned on letting it touch his skin.

And the kids laughed, deadpanned, or screamed, and a couple of them rushed to hide behind their parents, and Franky's laughter boomed as he gave them all huge fistfuls of candy—his giant hands could grasp a lot of fun-sized snickers and kit-kats and tootsie rolls, after all.

After seven o'clock, the traffic waned a bit, and by nine, there was no one else coming and his bucket of candy was reduced to almost nothing.

Franky took off his costume and remembered he hadn't eaten dinner. He rummaged through his kitchen, deciding on a frozen dinner; Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes, supposedly, although the authenticity was questionable. Maybe this would be a good time for him to take a serious shot at learning how to cook more than instant noodles and macaroni and cheese.

He sat down on his couch and turned on his TV, and realized, wow, he didn't want to learn how to cook. He wasn't looking for new hobbies; he liked what he did already, everything he did, way too much.

No longer hungry, he shoved his half-eaten dinner across the table. Sinking back deeper into the couch, he sipped at his Coke, staring at the TV, not really paying attention to whatever channel he'd put on.

There was only one thing Franky really wanted to do and—and—it wasn't cooking.

It would be five days before he'd even find out if he would still get to do it anymore.

* * *

**A/N: Ahhhh chapter 3 was the longest chapter yet, and thank you so much for reading THANKS FOREVER. thanks again for all the reviews(!) and all the things. THANKS HARDCORE FOR THE ART! LIKE WOWWWOWOW. idk how many times we can say thanks but we want to say it a lot. so. **

**we hope this chapter made you smile at least once and we hope even more to see you in chapter 4 ~ november! and as always you can find the art from us and from everyone else through the link on our profile page**


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